The science of labour and its organization

LS
I

UNIVERSITY OI^TORONTO
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

/ 2 3 1919

The Science of Labour

AND

Its Organization

BY
DR. JOSEFA 3OTEYKO

V

Formerly head of the Laboratory of Psycho-Physiology at
Brussels University, Laureate of the Institute

and of the Academy of Medicine

In charge of the course on "Fatigue" at the College de
France in 1916

The human motor and the measurement of industrial fatigue —
Scientific management — Measurement of aptitudes — Anthro-
pological comparison of the sexes from the point of view
of strength and endurance — Alimentation and work —
Re-education of the left hand for the mutilated — Belgian
methods of technical education and the University of Labour

LONDON :

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LIMITED
NEW YORK: E. P. BUTTON cS: CO.

1919

•EC.' it

JXfTfa s
602815

PREFACE

IN this little volume we have collected together a series of
articles published in 1916 and 1917 in the Revue
Philosophique, the Revue Scientifique, and the Revue
Generate des Sciences. We have revised them to ensure
that continuity of thought which has always run through
them all, but which does not shew quite so distinctly in
scattered publications ; to these we have added the
substance of some of our lectures on Fatigue delivered at
the College de France.

The leading idea running through this collection has
been the necessity for throwing light on certain points
in industrial psycho-physiology, which is universally
recognised as important at the decisive hour through
which we are now passing. Close collaboration between
science and industry will be necessary in the near future ;
the importance of this alliance will be greater than ever
when the actual crisis is passed and the need for making
a fresh start and for increased activity has made itself
felt. Now, events have caused a scarcity of labour;
it is, therefore, necessary to partly supply its place by
as perfect and scientific an organisation of labour as is
possible. A great part of life will have to be re-constructed.
It is important that this reconstruction should be wrell
devised from the first start, and that it should be based
upon scientific rules, so that the unhappy errors of the
past may be avoided.

This necessity has been so clearly seen that the atten-
tion of the Paris Academy of the Sciences has recently
been drawn to the importance of the problem, and various
measures have been proposed.

In the present volume we shall examine certain aspects
of the question, and add some personal contributions

iv. PREFACE

collected in the course of investigations of many years'
duration on the problem of Fatigue in the motor function .

Four problems are examined :—

The first concerns the Human Motor, and here the
question oi apprenticeship, the manner of the economic
working of the body, and the limits of industrial fatigue
form the chief part.

The second is devoted to Taylor 's System, which is so
much discussed at the present time.

The third relates to the relative Aptitude for Work of
the Right Hand and of the Left Hand, a question the
importance of wrhich has become very real, on account of
the large numbers of men maimed in the war. We shall
examine in succession : the estimate of the strength,
and of the power of endurance of each hand, in the case
of man and of woman, comparatively ; we shall advance
a new theory of our own regarding right-handedness ;
we shall give some rules for the re-education of the motor
power of the wounded, and closely examine the process
of writing with the left hand.

Finally, the fourth problem deals with the Belgian
Methods of Technical Education. We have thought
that it would not be uninteresting to make these known,
since Belgium now occupies the foremost place in
productivity in proportion to her population. She
owes this productivity to her methods of industrial
and technical education.

We trust that the importance of the problems discussed
justify the publication of this volume and that it will
emphasize the interest already felt in the subject.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE.

PREFACE .... ... iii.

I THE HUMAN MOTOR .

i. — DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM

2. — THE PROBLEM OF APPRENTICESHIP ... 5

Importance of the psychic element. — The
principle of the small muscles. — Outer
Buyse's investigations. — The Law of the
Economy of Effort by J. loteyko.

3. — THE ECONOMIC METHOD OF WORKING THE BODY 12

Imbert's investigations. - Haughton's
Fisher- women. — Function of the antago-
nistic muscles. — Adaptation of the muscles.
— Defensive function of fatigue. — In-
sufficiency of the defensive principle of
fatigue under present conditions of
Industrial Labour. — Whence the necessity
for objective investigations.

4. — THE MEASUREMENT OF INDUSTRIAL FATIGUE 23

The wear and tear of the body progresses geo-
metrically.—The length of the working-day
should not be fixed uniformly. — Fatigue is a
complex product. — The XIII International
Congress of Hygiene and Demography, hekl
in Brussels in 1903. — Our plan of study. —
Imbert's Report.— Imbert's Experiments on
dock labourers, and those of Gauthier on
the wine store workers. — XIV Congress of
Hygiene and Demography held in Berlin
in 1907. — Statistics of industrial accidents.
— Researches by Imbert and Mestre on
the transport of loads. — Imbert's Re-
searches relating to the workwomen
employed in the cutting of vines. — A new
chapter in Social Medicine.

vi. CONTENTS

PAGE.

II. THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGE-
MENT 53

i. — TAYLOR'S STUDIES ON THE ORGANISATION OF

LABOUR. 53

Choice of workmen. —

- Chronographic
vements. — Ex-

amples of increased output. — Study of the
constituents of Labour. — -The Human Factor
is by far the most important. — The System
of Premiums. — Scientific Management. —
Scientific Organisation of Factories and of
the Home.

2.— THE OPINION THAT SHOULD BE FORMED OF THE

PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT . 76

Three great mistakes : The absence of
scientific information concerning the
fatigue of the workman, The absence of any
guarantee to the workman in all that
relates to the future, The System of
Premiums " which leads to over- work, and
which is unsatisfactory from the moral point
of view. — Gravity of the other objections. —
The necessity of studying this system scien-
tifically from the bottom, and for not
applying it to the present time without great
caution. — Difference between industrial
manual work and pedagogic manual
work.— The Necessity for augmenting the
productivity and the well-being of the
Working-man.

3. — THE FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL IN THE DETER-
MINATION OF APTITUDES 89

The Science of the Study of the Child, or
Pedology.— Necessity for experimental
measurements in the Upper Primary Schools,
and in the Industrial Schools. — The estimate
of technical aptitude.- — The Principle of
the " most apt " should regulate future
Society.

III. POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK . 94

i. — THE VALUATION OF THE POWER AND W'ORK
OF THE RIGHT-HAND, AND OF THE LEFT.
ANTHROPOMETRIC COMPARISON OF THE SEXES. 94

The test of strength (dynamometer), and
the test of endurance (ergograph). —

CONTENTS vii.

PAGE.

Dynamometric indication. — Ergographic
indication. — Bimanual indication. — Sexual
indication of strength and power of en-
durance. -- The woman's power of
endurance. — Applications to industrial
work. — Necessity for a selection of working
women.— Longevity of Woman ; Her greater
resistance to disease ; The Feminine Sex
is determined by better food conditions. —
Woman is anabolic. — Man katabolic. —
Worms's statistics. — Statistics in times
of war.

2. — A NEW THEORY OF RIGHT-HANDEDNESS

(THE PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL THEORY) . 112

Effect of work and fatigue upon the heart.
— Woman has a more excitable heart than
Man. — They should be spared very hard
work.

3. — AMBIDEXTROUS EDUCATION 127

Facts and arguments in favour of a bi-
manual education.

4. — ALIMENTATION AND WORK 131

Our experiences demonstrate the superiority
of vegetarians from the point of view of
power of resistance to fatigue when
working. The two meatless days are an
hygienic measure as well as an economic one.

5. — USE OF THE LEFT HAND BY THE WOUNDED
AND MUTILATED (SOME SCIENTIFIC RULES FOR
RE-EDUCATION) 137

The necessity, among those suffering from
aphasia, to develop a new centre of language
by means of appropriate exercises. — To
teach the left hand the same movements
that were formerly made with the right, in
the trades followed by the wounded. —
Apprenticeship with the left hand to be
taught by following the rules of opposite
symmetry. — The use of the left-hand only
cannot be applied to all trades. — Those
trades requiring great effort must not
be chosen.

6. — LEFT-HANDED WRITING BY THE MAIMED . . 147

viii. CONTENTS

PAGE.

IV. BELGIAN METHODS OF TECHNICAL EDUCA-
TION .... 157

i. — PROGRESSIVE TECHNICAL EDUCATION THROUGH-
OUT BELGIAN SCHOOLS 157

2. — THE CHARLEROI UNIVERSITY OF LABOUR . . 179

3. — BELGIAN INITIATIVE IN THE INDUSTRIAL RE-
EDUCATION OF THOSE MAIMED IN THE WAR,
IN FRANCE . 191

'he Science of Labour.

i.

THE HUMAN MOTOR.

I. — DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM.

Amongst the numerous researches relating to
man, undertaken by modern science, those which
are connected with his physical fitness for work J
are certainly amongst the most important. The
human being, in these investigations, is looked upon
as a motor to which chemical energy is supplied,
which is restored to the world in the form of
mechanical labour and heat.

All animals may be compared to motors, which
transform the energy with which they have been
supplied. But they differ from inanimate motors in
that the cycle of transformations is not reversible
in the case of the living motor, and the energy which

2 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

is given it must invariably be of a chemical nature.
Moreover, the living motor can act only intermit-
tently ; fatigue and the need of sleep overtake it,
and forcibly interrupt the course of its activity.

The human motor may be studied from two very
different points of view. On the one hand, it is a
question of laboratory researches, having for their
chief object the verification of the laws governing
the transformation of energy in the living being.
Studies of this nature have been carried on in
every country, but principally by Chauveau in
Paris, Atwater and Benedict in the United States,
Rtibner, Ziintz, and Loewy in Germany. We must
also remember the " Laboratoire d'Energe"tique"
founded by Ernest Solvay near the Physiological
Institute of the University of Brussels. This
laboratory has been in existence only four years.
Amongst successful work achieved there, we may
mention the experiments made by ourselves in
collaboration with M. Ch. Henry, on muscles ;
on a law of diminution of effort shewn by the
ergograph (C.R., of the Academy of the Sciences,
30 March, 1903) ; on the general equation of the
curves of fatigue (C.R., 24 August, 1903) ; on the
modifications of the ergographic constants under
various experimental conditions (C.R., 24 May,
1904) ; on a connection between labour and the
labour known as stationary, which, according

THE HUMAN MOTOR 3

to the ergograph, are energetically equivalent
(C.R., 28 December, 1903) ; on the limits and on
the laws of the variations of available energy,
according to the ergograph, following the fre-
quency of the contractions, and the weight lifted.
(C.R., 28 November, 1904). By the use of the
apparatus known by the name of the Calorimetric
Chamber, Atwater was enabled to submit both
the physical and the intellectual toil of man to
a most rigorous test, from the standpoint of the
transformations of energy.

On the other hand, we have to consider the
application of the subject to the study of industrial
labour, and this study can be pursued as well in the
laboratories as in the factories and the workshops.
The immediate object of these enquiries is very
different from the former. It is not impossible,
within the impassable limits of the law of the
conservation of energy, to communicate an
activity to the human motor which will favour
the liberation of one form of energy rather than of
another ; we are thinking of exterior, mechani-
cal energy, the only kind which is of use in
industrial work, and which should therefore rank
above internal energy, which cannot be used.
Following the principle of the conservation of
energy, which has been indisputably verified on
the muscles, the heat given off, and the me-

4 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

chanical work produced, will be found to be
equivalent ; that which the human motor gains
on the one hand, it loses on the other. Further-
more, stationary work is often sterile work, convert-
ing itself integrally into heat and resolving itself
into intense fatigue. The general principle for the
production of useful work is admitted ; there is
still room for the choice of the most appropriate
movements, those best adapted to attain the end
in view ; certain movements are exhausting and
unproductive, either because they are made too
slowly or with an effort out of proportion to the
result obtained, or because they are badly loca-
lized, since they put one articulation in motion
in place of another, etc.

Hence the idea of submitting the working
of the bodily organs to experimental tests with a
view to discover their best working conditions,
to detect fatigue, and to lay down a scientific
basis for industrial work. We may call the
results achieved by researches in this sphere the
" Science of Labour," for, although this study
is only in its infancy, it has the benefit of all
preceding researches of pure science which will
give it their authoritative support in its noble
desire that the working classes may benefit by the
physiological and psychological discoveries of
our century. One of the promoters of this move-

THE HUMAN MOTOR 5

ment was the lamented Hector Denis, Deputy
to the Belgian Chamber, who with incomparable
ardour never ceased to encourage his fellow-
citizens in those researches of which he foresaw
the interest and utility.

II. — THE PROBLEM OF APPRENTICESHIP.

Industrial evolution gives an ever-increasing
importance to the psychic factor in the artisan's
work, says Omer Buyse1, formerly director of the
Universite de Travail at Charleroi, now director
of that at Brussels.

The phenomenon known as the " Crisis of
Apprenticeship " is mainly due, according to this
author, to the want of harmony between the old
form of apprenticeship and the technical capacity
requisite at the present day. Man, even now, very
rarely works as a physical motor in the industries
of ancient Europe. Man works more and more as
a psycho-physiological apparatus. The problem
of industrial labour, therefore, cannot be dealt
with simply as a branch of mechanics applied to
the natural sciences ; there is mixed with it a
psychic element which we recognise by its mani-
festations, but of the causes of which we are still

Omer Buyse, Le problems psycho-physique de VAppren-
tisage (Revus Psychologique, Vol. iii, 1910, pp. 377-399, Brussels).

6 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

ignorant. The growing importance of the psychic
factor will displace the axis of enquiry in the field of
psycho-physiology. The manner of working, the
dynamic effort, the duration of pauses, etc., intro-
duce elements of variation in the expenditure of
energy and the amount of useful work supplied,
which depend on the psychic qualities of the
individual from the standpoint of productiveness
both as to quantity and quality (Buyse).

Omer Buyse did his utmost to discover the
period of the psycho-physiological factors which
come into play during apprenticeship in the wood
and iron trades, by watching the work of four
young workmen in different stages of proficiency
for several months, and from day to day, and
that of some student mechanical-fitters, electri-
cians, modellers and joiners from the School
of Handicrafts, as well. From these observations
one dominating fact stands out ; through all the
changes to which industry has been subjected
the value of the workmanship always is, and will
for ever remain, the decisive element in the develop-
ment of the capacity of production. Engineers
and inventors apply themselves ceaselessly to
perfecting tools and the means of manufacture by
working out ideas supplied by science, but these
experimenters do not seem to have paid sufficient
attention to the perfecting of the human motor.

THE HUMAN MOTOR 7

The introduction of automatic and semi-automatic
tools and of the system of serial operations pro-
foundly modify the qualities required in a work-
man. Under what conditions should the work
of a craftsman be accomplished so as to attain
its best economic result ? It can be admitted as
possible that this question may be answered by
the investigations of experimental physiology
in conjunction with mechanical measurements
made upon rudimentary industrial labour. One
may hope, Omer Buyse remarks with justice, that
systematic study may soon lead us to an exact
knowledge of the physiological and psychological
qualities upon which the fitness of a craftsman
rests. The orientation which some professors of
technical education, in collaboration with some
experimental physiologists, actually give to their
researches enables us to foresee the not far distant
time when they will remove, with their registering
appliances, into the factories and workshops
and into the timber-yards themselves, there to
make scientific enquiries concerning the training
and the work of the artisan. Examination of
the economic problem of labour resolves itself into
(a) the subject : the power, the apprentice, the
workman ; and (b) the object : the resistance,
the work to be accomplished in typical indus-
tries.

8 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

Omer Buyse goes on to say that the physical
attitude of the workman as he works has a great
influence on the amount of work he accomplishes.
By discovering the voluntary degree of economy
of energy that it is possible to effect in the handling
of old-fashioned tools, in prescribing attitudes
which lead to a minimum of expenditure of energy
for a given piece of work, laboratory researches
may have a considerable influence on the pro-
ductivity of the worker.

Hence, says Buyse, the effect of training or habit
(a state antagonistic to fatigue), is to augment
the ease, the speed, the accuracy, and the uni-
formity of an act by its repetition. It may be
referred to one thing ; the adaptation of the
psycho-physical apparatus to certain particular
conditions of action. By the repetition of a
movement an aptitude is acquired for doing it
without the conscious intervention of the will
or the attention ; consequently, training effects
an economy of nervous flux and relieves the
strain on the central nervous system. In the
second place, under the influence of training, the
involuntary movements which, at the beginning,
are made in co-operation with the principal
movement, are suppressed. These involuntary
movements are a characteristic sign of inaptitude,
and constitute a waste of energy. Practice leads

THE HUMAN MOTOR 9

the body to put those muscles whose action is
inconvenient out of play, and to employ only
those which do the work with the greatest economy
and the minimum of effort. The mechanical
nature of work which results from training,
attains its maximum in the movements of the small
muscles whose expenditure of the flux of excita-
tion in isolated contractions is manifestly less
than that exacted by putting the large muscles
in motion. The introduction of machinery in
production has lightened the task of the large
muscles at the expense of the small ones. The
principle of the small muscles is at the bottom of
the evolution of labour.

An important constituent element in industrial
intelligence is voluntary attention and concen-
tration. It is thus that, in the midst of the
noises and bustle of a factory, the machinist
remains turned towards the machine which is
performing his work. The psycho-physical apti-
tudes which seem to be peculiarly favourable to
industrial work would, according to Buyse,
appear to be the rapidity and the precision of
movement ; these characteristics are the ex-
pression of the degree of control that the worker
possesses over his movements, and their co-
ordination.

Another indication of aptitude appears in an

io THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

interesting phenomenon which accompanies the
period of apprenticeship, it is the estimation of
the amount of fatigue produced in overcoming
resistance of the tool, in industrial work.

This estimate bears upon two different quan-
tities : (i) the muscular effort connected with
the execution of the work ; (2) the nervous effort
due to the fact that the nervous centres, according
to loteyko, transmit to the muscles an excitation,
the strength of which is in direct proportion to
the inertia of the muscle (Buyse).

Our investigations have in effect shewn that the
intensity of 1 nervous effort increases as the
mechanical conditions of the work required of the
muscles become more difficult, and inversely
that the intensity of the nervous effort diminishes
when the muscular work to be done becomes
more easy (law of the economy of effort). In this
we have a remarkable instance of the automatic
regulation of nervous effort, the difficulties of the
work acting as a stimulant to the nerve-centres.

Buyse investigates this question from the stand-
point of apprenticeship. This automatic regula-
tion is acquired by experience, and depends upon

1 J. loteyko, Lcs Lois, de I'Ergograph : Etude physio-
logique ct Mathematique. Bull, de V Academic de Belgique,
classe des Sciences, 1904, pp. 557-726 ; 2nd Ed. in the
Annales d'Electrobiologie, 1905. See also ; J. loteyko,
La lot de I' Economic de I'effort en dynamique nerveuse. Com-
municated to the Sixth International Physiology Congress
of Brussels, 1904.

THE HUMAN MOTOR n

an estimate of the intensity of the effort required for
the performance of the work, made probably by
the perception of the fatigue which will result
from the work. Apprenticeship which leads to a
realization of economy in labour is the regulator
of the muscular effort, which succeeds nervous
action. Muscular and nervous attempts at
action, like the succeeding judgments as to the
effort put forth, are not haphazard and un-
directed.

They are methodical, and the method consists
in attacking the particular work to be done in the
manner suggested by past experience. By this
means, and by means of a series of mistakes,
each recognized in turn, it becomes possible
to adjust the neuro-muscular excitation more
accurately to the action required. Apprentice-
ship to industries is carried out on the experi-
mental method. A beginner, who has no know-
ledge whatever regarding the effort required for
cutting wood is prepared to make a considerable
effort in order to perform the work successfully ;
he tires, and thus gets some idea, some estimate
of the effort to be made. To make hypotheses,
says Buyse, to put them to the best of experience,
to rectify them until you come to some provi-
sional or definite conclusion, to eliminate from
the error another of less importance, until you

12 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

get near the truth, is to simply apply the experi-
mental method, the method of discovery.

III. — ECONOMIC METHOD OF WORKING THE BODY.

The investigations of Mosso, and of his colla-
borators at the University of Turin, have opened
the road to these researches. They are too well
known to need repetition here. An exhaustive
study has been made by Italian physiologists of
the various conditions governing the optimum
of work with regard to the weight to be lifted,
the speed of contraction, intervals for rest, etc.

After writing our theories for the Doctorate of
Medicine, prepared in Paris, in M. Ch. Richet's
laboratory, we devoted more than fifteen years
to the study of physical and intellectual fatigue
in the Physiological Institute, Brussels, and in other
laboratories.1

We owe to M. Imbert, Professor in the Faculty
of Medicine at Montpellier, a very attractive

Sec some of our publications : Fatigue (article in the
Dictionnairede Physiologic, of Ch. Richet, nearly 200 pp., 1903);
La Fonction Musculaire (Doin, Paris, 1909) ; Le quotient de la
Fatigue (C.R. de I'Acadimie des Sciences, 1900) ; Effets du
travail de certains groupes musculaircs sur d'autres groupes
qui ne font aucun travail (Ibid., 1900) ; Participation des
centres ncrveux aux phenomenes de fatigue musculaire (Annie
Psychol, VII, 1900) ; Le travail des centres nerveux spinaux
(C.R., 1900) ; Les lois de I'Ergographie : etude physlologique
et Matheniatique (Travaux de I'Institut Solvay de Physiologic.
Pamphlet of 172 pp., 1904).

THE HUMAN MOTOR 13

study on the economic method of working the
body.2

We cannot, by the exercise of our will, modify
the form of our muscles ; but it is not without
interest to know whether our various muscles,
in so far as they are motors, are sufficiently
defective in their natural form to entail a useless
expenditure of energy, or whether they are not so.
By reason of the mechanical conditions under
which the levers of the body operate, the intensity
of the force of muscular contraction varies during
the moving of a load, or even during the stationary
holding of a weight, according to the position of
the bone-lever used. Now, it generally depends
upon our will as to whether we adopt this or that
position for our bone-lever, in order to accomplish
some exterior and pre-determined task, and we
thus do exercise some volitional influence upon
our total expenditure of energy. Imbert says,
that it is a fascinating idea to think that our body,
so far as it is only a productive instrument of toil,
is constructed upon a general plan and presents
such harmony of action that all useless expen-
diture of energy is, or at least may be, avoided.
This point of view is inexact. And even fatigue,
which seems to be the most important criterion

2 A. Imbert, Mode de fonctionnement economique de V OY-
ganisme (Collection Scientia), 1902.

14 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

of expenditure of energy, may correspond to
different expenditures of energy, if we compare
different motors, bodies which are not in identi-
cally the same state of action. Moreover, the
idea of mechanical work, which is independent of
the time employed in performing it, is purely
abstract.

If it is by fatigue that we wish to judge of the
total expenditure of energy, the limits between
which this expenditure may vary should be
attentively studied, so that the reaction of the
organism to sufficiently marked variations of
sensation may be clearly noted. Imbert was
anxious that children should not be included in
these experiments. For them, physical exercise,
the expenditure of mechanical energy, is a physio-
logical necessity, almost as necessary as food ;
they spend from the need of spending ; they run
and jump instead of keeping to the economic
gait of walking ; they even prefer a painful
ascent by a rope to the less exhausting process of
going up a staircase. The natural and unconscious
pre-occupation of children is not, as it is with
the grown man, to discover how to make the
best use of power, but, by exercise, to encourage
the normal development of the human motor.
In short, they are not perfect motors, but motors
in course of formation. Now, in contrast with

THE HUMAN MOTOR 15

children, from the standpoint of the utilization
of their strength, are convalescents. They seek
for the strictest economy of force ; they do all they
can to lessen such work as involves vertical
displacement of the centre of gravity.

Imbert cites an interesting incident investi-
gated by Haughton, relating to a road traversed
by some English fisherwomen. The work of these
women was the gathering of shellfish, and they
had to go along a road between their village
and the shore. The ground to be crossed consisted
of two very different stretches, so far as ease of
walking was concerned — one was firm and re-
sisted the pressure of the feet, the other was
sandy, the absence of firmness necessitating a
greater expenditure of energy for the same rate
of walking. On account of this peculiarity, the
road which entailed the lesser expenditure of
energy was not, geometrically, the shorter way,
that is to say, the straight line, because the
straight line would have compelled a long walk
over the sandy piece of ground. Neither of these
paths was that followed by the fisher- women.
The path chosen was midway between the two
and it was just this one that corresponded to the
minimum expenditure of energy. Haughton
decided mathematically that the law followed
in this walk was analogous to the law of refraction,

16 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

by following which, light waves passing through
media having different densities, are transmitted
from point to point in a minimum of tim^ ~~ -1
with a minimum of effort. In othe. wu. .. ,
choosing the intermediate road, partly co^~
of firm soil and partly of sand, the fisherwomen
were able to accomplish the journey in the mini-
mum of time, and with the minimum production
of fatigue.

Other examples, in various spheres, could be
cited, all demonstrating the constant tendency
of the human organism to reduce its expenditure
of energy to a minimum. The movements of
the eye form a good example of a natural adapta-
tion for effecting this object, the eye, on leaving
one object and fixing another, revolving about
an axis perpendicular to a plane cutting both
the former and the new line of vision. This is
known as Listing's law, and shews that the eye
normally makes the smallest possible movement
in transferring its line of vision from one object
to another.

Generally, it is by a forward inclination of the
body that we diminish the amplitude of the vertical
movements of our centre of gravity. We also
assume this stooping attitude when walking
quickly, or from fatigue, or, again, when we are
over-weighted by too heavy a load, that is to say,

THE HUMAN MOTOR 17

under the various circumstances for which it
Becomes necessary to expend the maximum effort.
r^-nheH: draws .attention to the antagonistic muscles.
, . ysry few muscles that are really
nistic-.-(as are, for example, the internal
dii«u external rectus muscles of the eye). Other
muscles are either in direct accord, or else, without
ceasing to be antagonistic, can co-operate simul-
taneously for the achievement of a common pur-
pose, as Demeny has observed. For instance, we
see, in slow movements of uniform speed, that
there is a simultaneous contraction of the two
antagonistic muscles. Now a force constantly
and always acting in the same manner on a body
will give it a quickened motion ; it follows,
therefore, that sustained speed can be obtained
only if the action of the flexing or extending
muscle is each moment counterbalanced by an
inverse action of the antagonistic muscle whose
intervention is indispensable. It is different
directly the movements executed became rapid.
The mechanical reason for the intervention of the
antagonistic muscle then no longer exists ; also
it appears that this muscle remains relaxed,
except at the end of a movement, when it
intervenes to cancel the speed. In all these
cases expenditure is reduced and the work in-
creased.

i8 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

It is just the same with the form of the muscles,
which, according to Haughton's observations,
is strictly adapted to the nature of the work to
be done, such as the heart for example, where the
complex arrangement of the muscular fibres
renders them particularly suitable for utilization
to the performance of the work required of that
organ. W. Roux has likewise demonstrated the
perfect harmony existing between the form of the
muscles and the conditions of their work. The
variations in the length of the fibres are adapted
to the extent of the movements which the muscles
have to make, and we see the muscular fibres
extend themselves spontaneously when stretching
to a part of their length, and vice versa. Marsy
definitely solved this problem in the affirmative.

Finally, Imbert cites the work done by
de Chauveau, to whom was reserved the discovery
of the first laws of muscular energy. His investi-
gations having become classic, we will not recapi-
tulate them here, but we must remember that
they dealt chiefly with the evolution of the
internal work of the muscles by virtue of the
principle of Equivalence, which governs all
transformations of energy. His experiments were
carried out upon the flexors of the fore-arm in
man, whose conditions of work vary according
to circumstances.

THE HUMAN MOTOR 19

The outcome of all these experiments is, says
Imbert, that, in the mechanical movements as
well as in the conservation of the internal energy
of the muscles, one clearly sees the unconscious
but constant effort to reduce the total expenditure
of energy to a minimum and the voluntary
realisation of mechanical conditions corresponding
to this minimum of expenditure. The body thus
would appear to be apt to appreciate two kinds of
conditions, the first external and of a mechanical
nature, the second internal and of a physiological
nature ; it would seem to know how to keep
account at the same time of mathematical laws
and of biological laws, but it is always by the same
process that it arrives at conclusions which differ
in their essence. The working of the animated
motor is, in effect, influenced by that very working
itself ; all work, sufficient in duration and
quantity, entails fatigue, and it is in reality by
the constant effort to avoid fatigue that we
regulate our action (Imbert).

The protective part played by fatigue, which
we dealt with in a previous publication,1 is fully
confirmed by these investigations.

We have previously seen that, according to
Buyse, at the time of apprenticeship, that is to

1 J. loteyko, Les Defenses psychiques : I. La Doulcu-r ;
II. La Fatigue. Revue Philosophique, Feb. 1913.

20 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

say, during the psychic adaptation to the work, we
became conscious of the nervous effort required
for over-coming the external resistance offered to
our performance of the work. At first the
movements are accomplished at the expense of a
great waste of energy, but repeated attempts
lead to economy in movements. The decisive
movement here is the consciousness of the effort
required. In the investigations connected with
the method of the economic working of the body
(outside the phase of apprenticeship), this decisive
movement which regulates the conservation of its
energy is the feeling of fatigue. Now, effort and
fatigue are correlated sensations, for a great effort
ijn variably leads to fatigue, and when a young
apprentice, in the course of time, acquires the best
movements, it is because he is convinced by
experience that they lead to the minimum of
fatigue.

We are, therefore, justified in affirming that the
psychic factor which regulates the expenditure of
energy of the human motor, so as to ensure the
most economical working, the factor which guides
the animal machine to adaptation to the best
conditions for working, which even modifies the
forms of muscles to suit them to their work,
is the sensation of fatigue. We know that the
function creates the organ. The importance

THE HUMAN MOTOR 21

of fatigue from the standpoint of evolution
is here transparently clear.

The wrong movements, badly adapted, accom-
panied by a waste of energy, are those that, at
the same time, are the most fatiguing ; now,
pain and fatigue are the physical and psychical
conditions which we are endeavouring to avoid
throughout our lives. Fatigue is the conscious-
ness of over-work, the result, it may be, of too
much work, or it may be unproductive work,
accompanied by waste.

Is fatigue supreme ? It certainly is not more so
than all our other psychic defences, such as, for
example, pain, whose defensive role has been so
thoroughly investigated by Charles Richet. Even
the general law of pain and of pleasure may, in
certain cases, be opposed to happiness. The part
played by fatigue could be exercised only within
certain limits. Like all sensations, fatigue is
subject to illusions, to oscillations, it may become
insensible in some pathological conditions, or, on
the contrary, be unduly developed without
apparent cause. It is, moreover, subject to the
conditions of work. It is easy to understand that
the aberrations are more frequent when the work
is very complicated as, for example, in the case of
industrial work. Le Chatelier is, therefore, right
when he protests against the supposition that

22 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

skilled workmen understand quite well how to
make the best use of their forces in order to
obtain a given result with the minimum amount
of fatigue.

If we take, as an example, the transport of heavy
weights, a task which is relatively simple, we find,
according to Taylor, that the labour is governed by
six variables, viz., the weight carried on each
journey, the distance traversed, the inclination
of the road, the speed when fully loaded, the
speed of the return empty-handed, and the time
of rest. The workman could not in any case
determine under these conditions the most
economical use of his mechanical energy.

In other cases a dozen or more variables have
been counted. Taylor devoted 25 years of his life to
making exact calculations concerning these vari-
ables, and their large number prevents the work-
man himself from taking any bearings. We may
conclude that the sense of fatigue ceases to be really
protective under these conditions, which moreover
nature could not have foreseen. This sense partly
loses its biological significance here, not because
there is anything out of harmony with natural laws,
but because the body is not adapted to all these
new functions imposed upon it by modern indus-
tries. Consequently, it is no longer the sense of
fatigue which can be the decisive moment to which

THE HUMAN MOTOR 23

is allotted the task of regulating the optimum of
work. When dealing with industrial labour
this task is handed over to another factor. We
are contemplating scientific investigations of the
conditions of the work itself, the measurement
of, not only subjective, but also objective, fatigue.

4. — THE MEASURE OF INDUSTRIAL FATIGUE.

The problem of labour could never have been
solved had it not been for the entry of physiology
and psychology into its domain.1

Therefore, relying upon facts authenticated by
Mosso, and upon other considerations we find
that fatigue increases much more rapidly as the
duration of the work done is prolonged.2

Mosso x has shewn, by means of the ergograph,
that the exhaustion of our bodies does not increase
in direct ratio with the work accomplished,
therefore, the performance of work two or three
times more arduous does not produce fatigue
two or three times as great. The important fact
to remember is, however, that a given task per-

XJ. loteyko, La Mesure de la Fatigue professionnelle.
Revue psychologique II, 1909, p. 53 Bruxelles.

2J. loteyko, Les Defenses Psychiques. Revue philoso-
phique, Feb. 1913. This article contains other details
bearing on the question.

1 A. Mosso, La fatigue intellectuelle et physique, Paris, F. Alcan
1894.

24 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

formed by an already fatigued muscle has a much
more injurious effect upon that muscle, and results
in the production of greater fatigue than would
be the case if the same task were performed under
normal conditions.

The human organism cannot be compared to a
locomotive which consumes a given quantity of
coal for each mile of road it covers ; when the
body is tired a small amount of labour produces
disastrous effects. In these experiments the
accumulation of fatigue was measured by means of
the time necessary for complete restoration to the
normal.

We studied z the accumulation of fatigue by
means of short rests between the ergographic
curves. The same rest produced a diminishing
effect in proportion as the muscle became more
and more fatigued. Identical phenomena were
observable in the domain of intellectual fatigue.

This proof, we maintain, shews the necessity of
raising wages, not in proportion to the increase
of labour, not uniformly for each additional hour
of work, but on a graduated scale, seeing that the
wear and tear of the body proceeds in geometrical
progression, whilst the work is accomplished in
arithmetical progression. It also proves that
human energy is opposed to over-work, the work

z J. loteyko, Les lots de I' Ergographic, quoted above.

THE HUMAN MOTOR 25

itself becoming less and less productive in propor-
tion to the growth of fatigue. The reduction of
the hours of work thus become a biological and
economic necessity.1

Hence we can formulate the following postulates
which social science should take into consideration,
seeing that they are derived from statements
scientifically and experimentally proved.

1. That as the daily work of the workman
follows an arithmetical progression, so his
wages should follow a geometrical progres-
sion. The co-efficient in the increase of
salaries should be experimentally determined
in each trade by taking into consideration
the methods of work employed.

2. For equal work, an equal wage. The
woman who does the same work as the man
should be paid the same wage. The amount
of work done should be determined in each
trade. An equivalence might be established
between the various trades based on the
laws of energy. This postulate, which is
that of justice, based on the equality of
production, nowhere comes into collision
with that of justice based on an equality of
expense. It is thus, for example, that, by

1 See : L. J. Fromont, Une experience industrielle de la
journee dc travail. Published by 1' Institut Solvay de Sociologie,
1906. Brussels.

26 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

reason of a different principle, fathers of
large families have a right to supplementary
grants.

3. It is necessary to put a maximum limit
to the daily number of working hours for
each trade. On account of the inevitable
wear and tear of the body, an excessive
increase in the number of working hours
cannot be compensated for, by an increase
of wages.

4. In the educational world teachers expose
themselves to grave disappointment when
they increase the amount of the pupils' work
without knowing the laws of fatigue in
relation to their age, sex, constitution, and
aptitudes. The difficulty to be surmounted
does not increase in proportion to the matter
to be studied, but much more rapidly
(Ebbringhaus).

Those subjects which demand a high degree of
training by means of prolonged periods of study
cannot be acquired by an organism in a state of
over-work. To solve the question scientifically
it is necessary to demonstrate that the worker is
over-worked, that is to say, that his physiological
expenditure is in excess of his receipts. In order
to avoid over-work it is necessary that the worker

THE HUMAN MOTOR 27

should recover his full powers by his night's
rest and his weekly rest.

How are these results to be estimated ? The
matter is all the more difficult in that, to over- work,
are often added the injurious effects of an unhealthy
trade. There is, therefore, a double danger.
It would be interesting to study this combination of
two morbid effects, but it would also appear to be
indispensable that the effects of fatigue should
stand out in all their clearness if investigations
are to be conducted in a strictly scientific fashion,
so as to yield useful data.

It is absurd, says Liesse,1 to pretend to fix
a priori a uniform length of working-day for
all industries in all countries.

The analysis of the elements of production
teach us, on the contrary, that there exist different
limits for each kind of work, often for each country
investigated, the nature of the climate, the race
and the habits of the people being the primary
causes of the diversity. Sommerfeld 1 shares
this opinion.

What methods can be advocated for studies of
this kind ? The pathological method has far
too long been the only one applied ; that consists

1 A. Liesse, Le travail au point de vere scientlfique, Industrie!
et social, Paris, F. Alcan, 1899.

1 Th. Sommerfeld, Traite des maladies professionnelles.
French translation, Brussels, 1901.

28 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

in drawing up statistics of morbidity and mortality.
Such a method, by itself, is insufficient, seeing
that the pathogenetic action of fatigue is the sign
of such serious trouble that it would be dangerous
to base labour legislation on an organic collapse
due to over-work. The methods advocated
should be more delicate and at the same time
more precise, allowing of the measuring, so to
speak, of the phenomena of fatigue and their
manifestations, so as to put in evidence the signs
of over- work long before organic collapse. It is a
question of actual prophylaxy of fatigue. Such
methods can be only psycho-physiological.

Fatigue is a very complex result of numerous
factors. The intensity of the fatigue is the
function of the following factors 1 :—

1. Hours of work.

2. Relative wages (ratio between a living wage
and the cost of provisions).

3. Nature and organisation of the work.

4. Individual constitution and aptitudes (sta-
ture, length of arm, disposition of the
muscles, power of attention, morbid predis-
positions, maladies).

5- Age.

6. Sex.

7. Town or country life.

1 See our article in the Rfvue Physiologique, 1909-

THE HUMAN MOTOR 29

8. Personal hygiene (nourishment, sleep, etc.
A workman may spend his wages on useless,
or even harmful things. Moral Hygiene).

One may add to these factors the influence of
climate, of race, of customs, etc. Amongst
these factors the nature and organisation of the
v/ork comprise many chapters, and it is chiefly
here that research should be made ; but no
formal conclusion can be arrived at without
consulting the conditions collectively under which
the work is carried on. These conditions are to the
worker intrinsic and extrinsic.

The question of industrial fatigue was placed on
the programme for discussion at the International
Congress of Hygiene and Demography. The
Congress, held at Brussels in 1903, put the
question in the following form : To what extent
is it possible by physiological methods, to study
fatigue, its manifestations, and its degrees in the
various industries ? What are the arguments which
the physiological and medical science could or
might recommend in favour of definite methods
for the organisation of labour ? Three reports and
one paper were submitted in reply to this question
(Imbert, Treves, Demoor, and ourselves). Seeing
that the problem was so new, not one of these
writers was able to give the result of experi-

30 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

ments, but they all at least made an attempt to
solve it.

In our article we suggested a plan of study
which included the following points :

I. Preliminary Medical Examination. — The first
obvious necessity is the medical examination of
young people at the time when they are choosing
a career, and this applies just as much to the
various handicrafts as it does to the liberal
professions. All those who have taken the wrong
turning in their choice of a career become an
easy prey to over-work and only aggravate
existing defects. Their efficiency is seriously
diminished, and consequently their well-being.
In these inaptitudes in certain professions, we may
detect one of the causes of over-work, and social
unproductiveness.

II. Laboratory methods which have for their aim
the study of the energy of labour,

III. Investigations and experiments made on the
workers, in factories, workshops, and buildings.

1. The study of fatigue in different parts of the
body (organs of the senses, etc.).

2. Observations made on the progress of the

work done. It is essential to see which
conditions yield the best return.

THE HUMAN MOTOR 31

3. Influence of machinery on the over-fatigue
of the workers.

4. Sensitivity to pain. Sensitivity to pain,
measured by the algesimeter, increases under
the influence of slight intellectual fatigue,
and diminishes under great exhaustion
Itoyko and Stef anowska) .

5. Ergographic methods.1

6. The ponometric method. The ponometer is
the instrument invented by Mosso to inscribe
the curve of nervous effort during the pro-
gress of muscular work.

7. Method of the reflex phenomena. — In the case

of cerebral fatigue, as the inhibitory effects of
the brain on the central nervous system
become less, the reflexes becomes exag-.
gerated. This fact has been observed in
neurasthenia and also in cases of general
fatigue (Westpole, Sternberg).

8. Method of chromatic sensitivity. This sensiti-
vity becomes less in cases of general fatigue.

9. Plethysmographic method. — Under fatigue
it is noticeable that the capillary pulse
indicates asthenia (Binet and Courtier).

10. Method of measuring the time taken for
reaction. — Reaction is slower under the
influence of fatigue.

1 See our book : La fonction Musculaire (Paris).

32 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

IV. Pathological Methods. — These consist in
studying pathogenic effects of over-work ; loss of
weight, arrested growth, deviations, malforma-
tions, industrial maladies.

V. Investigations and interrogations. — We would
call attention to the interesting investigations
made by Bloch (of Paris) on the subject of
industrial fatigue. The author propounded the
following question to different artisans ; When
you have been very busy, whereabouts do you
feel fatigue ? The answers, at first sight, seem
very paradoxical ; we select a few examples.
The baker, who had been kneading all night,
leaning over and mixing the heavy mass of dough,
complained of fatigue in his legs. The black-
smith, who strikes the anvil, does not complain of
tired arms or shoulders, but of his back and loins.
The road-mender working with his pick is tired
in the legs. The shoemaker, who strikes with a
hammer, complains of his loins and abdominal
muscles. The young soldier, after a march, is
chiefly tired in the nape of the neck, even though
he has not carried a haversack. The inexperi-
enced violinist complains of a distressing strain
at the back of the neck ; whilst the accomplished
artist wails over a numbness of the left hand
which he has held contracted upon the finger-

THE HUMAN MOTOR 33

board of his instrument. The experienced
oarsman suffers from fatigue in the calves of his
legs and insteps, after prolonged exertion.

The paradoxical appearance of the answers is
explained in the following way by Bloch : the
fatigue predominates in the groups of muscles
that become immovable when contracted. These
experiments shew the existence of static fatigue,
which sometimes predominates. They also shew
that the groups of auxiliary muscles in industrial
movements should be exercised as much as possible
so as to break the continuity of contractions,
whether auxiliary or principal.

In his report laid before the Brussels Congress
Imbert particularly insists upon the slackening of
contraction and muscular relaxation which is the
first sign of fatigue and manifests itself after quite
a small number of contractions, even before the
height of the movement is appreciably diminished.
The fact, long known and noticed in the muscles
of the frog, has been verified by Imbert and
Gagniere in a man working at the ergograph.
This diminution of the rapidity of contraction
gives rise to a practical result of great interest.

The accidents in connection with labour are
generally the outcome of some fortuitous event.
In such cases they often arise so suddenly that the
workman finds it is impossible to escape from the

C

34 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

danger that threatens. In other cases, on the
contrary, the menace is less sudden ; the workman
sees it coming, and can ward it off. But then
it is necessary that the workman's muscular
contraction should be achieved as rapidly as
possible, because the time at the workman's
disposal is often only a fraction of a second. And
in those trades where the workmen are, as it were,
attached to a moving machine and have to regu-
late the speed of their work by that of the machine
it is easy to conceive the part played by fatigue in
workmen's accidents. Besides, one has also to
take mental fatigue into consideration, and it is
this which lengthens the psychic process inter-
vening between perception and movement.

The result of this, says Imbert, is that accidents
connected with work must be more numerous
as the day advances, more numerous, too, in the
corresponding hours, at the end than at the
beginning of the week, if work is pressed too far.
The statistics of the distribution of accidents
connected with labour therefore constitute an
indication of the degree of fatigue in the human
motor (see later).

Other observations may also lead to the verifi-
cation of physical fatigue. The attitude of the
workman at the beginning and at the end of a
hard day's work may shew certain modifications,

THE HUMAN MOTOR 35

which follow the principle discovered by Marey, in
connection with the vertical displacements of the
centre of gravity during progress of the work.
As a general rule, the useless expenditure of energy
is suppressed during fatigue and the body in-
stinctively adopts a more economical attitude.
This attitude can be determined by chronophoto-
graphy which also enables successive records to
be taken during the progress of work.1 Whether
the question is one of intellectual, or of physical,
fatigue, can now be decided, as we have since then
been in possession of general methods of investi-
gation, and of general processes of measurement.
Such is the conclusion arrived at in Imbert's
report 2

In an article which appeared in L'Annee
Psychologique Imbert shews the importance of the
problem laid down by social medicine. However
useful these attempts may be, we must not ignore
the almost hostile indifference with which they
were at first received in the Syndicalist centres
of working men. Moreover, the experimental

1 In an exhaustive inquiry into the labour of working men
undertaken by the Solvay Institute of Sociology in Brussels,
in which we, in colloboration with others, undertook the
physiological part, the attitudes of workmen were determined,
thanks to cinematography. Events and the tragic accident
of which M. Waxwieiler, director of the Institute, was the
victim, delayed the publication of the inquiry.

2 Imbert, L 'Etude scientifique experimentale du travail
professional (Annee Psychologique t 1907, Vol. xiii., pp. 245-

36 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

and exact study of a trade is a project which
cannot be carried out without some difficulty.
The author quite rightly insists on the inadequate
information furnished by the valuation of mechani-
cal work ; as a matter of fact, this puts us in
possession of only one factor in the problem.
He gives an account of experiments he made on
the dock labourers at Cette in the unloading of
colliers as well as those of A. Gauthier on the labour
of wine and spirit storehouse workmen working
a wine-pump. In both cases the mechanical
labour was stringently estimated. But it would
be misleading to rely upon a simple estimate in
kilogramme-metres to fix the value of industrial
labour.

To compare in kilogrammes, labour achieved
under different conditions, would lead to the
conclusion, for instance, that to ascend to the
next floor by going up a good staircase is the
same thing as raising oneself by one's arms up a
long vertical rope, since the mechanical labour
is the same in both cases. Such a conclusion
is mechanically exact, but physiologically false.

Thus, the wine and spirit storehouse labourers,
studied by A. Gauthier accomplished, in their from
nine to ten hours' day, work estimated at 212,200
kilogramme-metres ; whilst the day's work of the
dock-labourers was equal to 75,000 kilogramme-

THE HUMAN MOTOR 37

metres. Judging by these numerical results,
it would seem that the former labour must be
about three times as difficult as the latter, because
in these cases the same muscles came into play,
viz., those of the arms and of the trunk. But the
mechanical conditions in which the muscles
operated in these two kinds of work are sufficiently
dissimilar to completely reverse the conclusion.
All the dock-labourers would be capable of per-
forming the day's work of a wine pumper, but
the reverse would certainly not be the case.
Consequently the eight hours' day of the coalheaver
is paid at the rate of eight francs, whilst in the
same town the wage of the wine pumper is only
from 4-5 francs for a ten hours' day.

Compare with these figures the enormous
amount of mechanical work a postman would
produce who made two rounds daily, each of
three hours duration, at a speed of 3,600 metres
per hour. We should thus get 259,200 kilogramme-
metres per day, whilst a dock labourer only
achieved 75,000 kilogramme-metres.

It is enough also to remember the works of
Chauveau dealing with internal muscular effort
(excess of animal heat), to judge of the well-
known inadequacy of an estimate based exclu-
sively upon the information derived solely from
mechanical labour.

38 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

To estimate in kilogramme-metres is of practical
use' when the aim is to measure the relative values
of different movements employed in the same
work, etc. But if it is desired to study the effects
that skilled labour may produce on the body
of the labourer, research should be directed to
the study of biological phenomena.

With regard to the literature on over-work
submitted to the XIV th International Congress on
Hygiene and Demography, held at Berlin in 1907,
we here give an outline, based on the account
given by Imbert.1 Of the four reports submitted
to the Congress upon the question of Over-work
in the performance of industrial labour, those by
Dr. Roth, by Dr. Treves, and by Professor Imbert
assert the existence of overwork ; the third
report, presented by Eisner, chief engineer to the
Berlin Water Works, states the opposite view.
Eisner's report — a very sincere one — is the ex-
pression of very strong and convinced opinions,
and furnishes a partial explanation of the bitter-
ness of the conflict between Capital and Labour.

The three other writers, a German, an Italian,
and a Frenchman, all members of the Medical
profession, testify in a greater or less degree,
to the existence of over-work, not as a general

1 Imbert, Le surmenage par suite du travail profcssicnnel
au XIV Congres international d' hygiene et de demographic,
Berlin 1907 (Annee Psychologique, XIV, Vol. 1908).

THE HUMAN MOTOR 39

fact affecting the working population as a whole
of the various countries, but particularly with
regard to certain districts or to certain categories
of workers. Treves, of Turin, expresses himself
as follows, ' The work in the experimental
physiological and psychological laboratories would
be sterile and of very limited interest, if the doctor
in the course of his researches did not ask himself
which are, in practical life, the circumstances
equivalent to those created by his experiments.
We may say that, from whatever, branch of
human knowledge it may emanate, every concep-
tion carried into the field of applied knowledge
implies some contribution to the solution of some
social problem, and we cannot eliminate the
social problem of labour when speaking of the
aetiology of industrial over- work."

The statistics of the accidents connected with
labour, which shed such a vivid light on the
phenomena of the fatigue of workmen, have
been studied by Imbert and Mestre.1 In fact,
work engenders fatigue, and that is chiefly
produced by modifications which supervene
in the manner in which the motor at work acts,
and which consists in a slackening and diminution

1 See : Imbert, Les accidents de travail et les compagnies
d' Assurances (Revue scientifique, 4 Juin, 1904). Imbert and
Mcstre, Statistiques d' accidents du travail. Ibid., 24 Septembre,
1904).

40 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

in the intensity of the muscular contraction.
The workman is all the less fit to perform the
necessary defensive movements when an accident
occurs, and to perform them with the required
rapidity, in that he is admittedly weary.

It follows that the number of accidents should
be greater when the workers are more tired,
and the distribution of these accidents according
to the time of day at which they occur should
furnish a means of estimating the degree of fatigue
felt by the workers who have been the victims of it.

Starting from this premise, the authors con-
structed a curve based on official information
gathered from one district in Herault, which
numbers 56,458 workmen of various trades,
subject to the la\v of accidents of labour, amongst
whom there had been 2,065 acknowledged victims
in 1903. In the next place, another curve was
prepared, and that included, distributed according
to the hours at which they occurred, the 660
accidents which had taken place in the industries
officially known as Management and Transport
(MamUention et Transport} which employ 6,695
workers. The results may be grouped as follows :

(1) The number of accidents increases progres-
sively, from hour to hour during the first half-day ;

(2) After the fairly long mid-day rest, in the early
hours of the second half-day, the number of

THE HUMAN MOTOR 41

accidents is notably less than during the last
hour of the morning ; (3) In the course of the
second half of the day accidents again become
progressively more frequent from hour to hour ;
(4) The number of accidents per hour towards
the end of the second half-day is notably
higher than the corresponding maximum of the
morning.

We could not wish for stronger confirmation
of the Author's point of view, and the degree of
certainty is still further increased when we com-
pare the two curves with one another and with the
curves of each trade which shew an identical
progression. Curves of this nature are nothing
new ; they are exactly like those that are ob-
tained, for instance, when measuring intellectual
fatigue by means of the esthesiometric method.
And this is one more argument to oppose to those
who try to see in Imbert and Mestre's curves the
influence of chance or unknown cause other than
fatigue.

The authors also produce the results of other
statistics which, without exception, confirm
the same facts.

In basing arguments upon the number of
accidents, it is permissible to estimate the average
danger incurred in a given trade. The most
dangerous trades are those comprised under the

42 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

heading : Chemical Industries ; next comes
Management and Transport.

We owe some other experimental writings on
the measurement of industrial fatigue to Imbert.,
in collaboration with Mestre,1 inspector of labour
in Herault, who has instituted researches relating
to the transport of loads by means of a truck,
a wheelbarrow with two low wheels in common
industrial use.

One of the handles of this truck is made in two
pieces, the portion grasped by the workman being
joined to the other portion by means of two
plates, one on either side of the handle, the
attachment of the plates to the portion grasped
by the workman being made with a single bolt
so as to allow this portion to have a partial rotary
movement in the vertical plane of the handle.
On the under sides of the two portions of the handle
are fixed two angle plates, interposed between,
and fixed to which is an elliptical spring, whilst
on the top sides of the two portions are fixed a
second pair of similar angle plates, to one of which
a Marey's tambour is attached, whilst to the other
a rod is fixed which operates the diaphragm of the
tambour by means of a link connection. By
connecting the tambour to a receiving tambour

1 Imbert and Mestre, Reckerches sur la war. centre du
Cabrouet et la fatigue qui en resulte. Bulletin de 1'inspection
du travail, 1905, No. 5.

THE HUMAN MOTOR 43

operating a stylus arranged to inscribe a record
on a drum, it is obvious that the efforts made
by the workman in a direction perpendicular
to the handles (that is the effort necessary to
support the load), can be registered. If the
other handle of the truck is made cylindrical
and the portion grasped by the workman is
surrounded by a sleeve, the lower end of which
is attached to a pair of angle irons similar to those
employed on the other handle, and located on the
upper and under sides of it, the same arrangement
of elliptical spring, tambour and rod being used
as before, the efforts of the workman in the
operation of pushing or pulling the truck can be
registered. In addition to the methods just
described, which were used to obtain a record of
the energy expended in supporting and transport-
ing loads by means of the truck (railway platform
truck), the energy required to load and unload the
truck was also registered by a modification of
the same device. This modification consisted
of an elliptical spring, atached to a hook and
provided with a handle, one side of the spring
carrying the transmitting tambour and the other
side the rod for operating the tambour diaphragm.
The workman grasped this device by the handle
and seized the load by means of the hook, his
effort in lifting or dragging the load on to or off

44 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

the truck was thus recorded on a revolving drum.
Finally, one of Marey's boots was used to enable
a record to be taken of the effort made by the
workman on the axle of the truck wheels to check
the recoil during loading of the truck.

All the efforts put forth by the workman
during his work, both as to duration and intensity,
could thus be registered. Of the various move-
ments necessitated by the loading, transport,
and the unloading, the most painful and the
most tiring, because of its repetition, is that
of loading. In order to place in the barrow a
sack weighing 60 kilogrammes, the workman has
to exert an effort of about 30 kilogrammes. Hence,
a youth of about 16 or 17 years of age (these
investigations especially have the labour of
young workmen in view), can scarcely ever,
under the mechanical conditions under which
the load is handled, develop more than a maximum
effort of 40 kilogrammes, it is, therefore, an effort
equal to three quarters of the maximum which
the young workman has to put out at each
movement of loading. This movement being
repeated sixty times an hour, for the transport
of one sack to a distance of 48 metres, the young
workman has thus, during the legal working day
of ten hours, to put out with his upper limbs a
total effort of more than 18,000 kilogrammes.

THE HUMAN MOTOR 45

As to the actual transport, it is not very
tiring on a firm soil, for a strength of from 3-4
kilogrammes suffices for the wheeling of a barrow
loaded with a sack weighing 60 kilogrammes.
On the other hand, one must seriously consider
the total distance covered, which at the time
these observations were made amounted to
about 30 kilometres for the ten hours' work.

Finally, if, after having made a young workman
labour for an hour, you give him two hours complete
rest, the ergographic tracings then taken will
still betray sufficiently marked signs of weariness.

The stature of the workman is an important
factor with regard to the fatigue due to working
with a barrow. The shortest are at the greatest
disadvantage.

Such objective results, say Imbert and Mestre,
might be usefully taken into consideration for the
regulation of women's and children's barrow-work,
and, if a strike were to break out in connection
with such labour, we should find, in the literature
of the subject, some new points by which to judge
the fairness of the worker's claims and for the
equitable solution of the dispute. The principle
of registration is besides of very general appli-
cation ; all industrial machinery can be provided
with a similar register allowing of the registration
of muscular effort.

46 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

Professor R. Lepine,1 of Lyons, after mentioning
Imbert's writings, adds, " Once more, such
investigations are still only in their infancy,
but one can easily guess their destiny ; and in
any case, one must admire those who have attemp-
ted them, for having shewn that, side by side
with the great questions which have until now-
taken the lead in social medicine, such as tuber-
culosis, alcoholism, insanity and tenements,
there are others, more important in the future,
since their solution depends largely on the or-
ganisation of labour."

Imbert 2 has also made a study of another
kind of labour which consists in spreading out
the long branches of American vines in slips
of a predetermined length and breadth. This
work only occupies a minimum number of people.
At Montpellier, for instance, the staff employed
never exceeds one hundred, and is almost entirely
made up of women and girls. After having
made an estimate of this work in mechanical
units, it was possible for the present writer to fix,
numerically, the amount of work exacted from
each worker in return for each centime of her
wages. He has thus introduced a new element

1 R. Lepine, L' evolution de la Medecine a la fin du XIX
siecle (Revue du Mois, No. 12, 1906).

2 Imbert, Elude experimentale du travail prof essior.nel ouvrier
( Revue d' economic politique, 1909).

THE HUMAN MOTOR 47

into the problem of the general relation which
may exist between the wage paid and the
labour supplied.

This work, which lasts only for four or five
months in the year, from November to March, is
carried on either in huge sheds or in the open air ;
it begins at 7 a.m., and ends at about 5 p.m.,
generally with two intervals of rest, one at 8 a.m.
for breakfast, the other at noon for the chief
meal of the day. As this work is paid by contract
and the task of each woman is absolutely inde-
pendent of that of her companions, each one is
absolutely free to regulate her hours of rest
according to her own wishes, or even to add to
them.

The effects of the cutting wrere registered by
means of graphic inscription. Thanks to the
employment of Marey's drum, some of the tracings
of muscular effort could be registered. These
tracings were calibrated in kilogramme-metres.
For each centime of wage the woman had to
supply 686 kilogramme-metres of labour. The
payment for 1,000 slips was 65 centimes. The
women, questioned as to the feelings of fatigue
experienced by them, complained of pain in the
line of the right shoulder when arranging their
hair in the morning. The statements, emanating
as they did from working women well accustomed

48 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

to work, were evidence that the muscles used
during their work were daily submitted to a
certain amount of over-strain, since the night's
rest was not sufficient for their restoration to a
perfectly normal condition by the following
morning.

With regard to the localisation of the pains
complained of, this is explained by the fact that
for the rather thick slips the sections could not
be cut by the sole action of the flexors of the
fingers which surround the pruning-shears and
thus render the hand immovable ; the fore-arm
is in a certain degree of flexion with regard to
the arm, and hence the cutting is achieved by the
action of the extensor muscles of the fore-arm,
with the fixing of the arm due to the action of
the muscles of the shoulder. It may be noticed
that the over-work of which the women complained
is explained, not by a muscular phenomenon,
properly so-called, as the women did not complain
of any diminution in their power of working,
but by a phenomenon of a nervous order. This
proof shews plainly the importance of the element
of pain in the complex phenomenon of fatigue.

The author also verifies the superiority of some
workwomen over others. Even in an industry
which would seem to belong to those essentially
mechanical, the ability of the worker, and there-

THE HUMAN MOTOR 49

fore his wage, may depend far more on his mental
than on his physical qualities. Now, all the
details by which the technique of a clever work-
woman may be distinguished from that of a
mediocre one, are translated in practice into an
economy of time in the performance of the various
actions which go to the preparation of the slips.1
And a not less interesting thing is that the mediocre
workwoman, who has the same incentive as her
more skilled companion to increase her wage,
was incapable of recognising and then of imitating
those technical details, some of which are more-
over very easy to discover.

In other experiments the same writer2 studied
the work of a filer, and determined the charac-
teristics of a good and a bad filer.

We will quote another experiment made by
Imbert 3 on transport by means of the common
wheelbarrow — a vehicle possessing one wheel only.
As the load is generally a low one, the effort to
support it is greater than is the case with the two-
wheeled barrow, and the fatigue is more pronounced.
It is in discharging a load of 21 kilogrammes that

1 Imbert, Exemples d'etude physiologiques directe du travail
professional ouvrier (Revue d' Hygiene et de Police samitaire,
Aout, 1909).

2 A. Imbert, Les Methodes de laboratoire appliqnees a I'etude
directe et pratique des questions ouvriers. Revue general dt s
sciences, 30 Juin, 1911.

3 A. Imbert, Bulletin de I' Inspection du travail,
Xo~. i and 2.

50 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

the wheelbarrow has advantages over the two-
wheeled variety. A load of 21 kilogrammes,
directly borne, is the economic limit of a work-
man's carrying power. Pushing a one-wheeled
barrow is more tiring than pushing one with two
wheels. It causes a more accentuated action of
the respiratory and of the circulatory organs and
produces muscular pain, chiefly in the arms, of
a more lasting nature than that brought on by
wheeling a two-wheeled barrow.

These enquiries most certainly constitute a new
and most interesting chapter in social medicine.
The Political Economy Section of the French
Association for the Advancement of the Sciences
(session of 1908 held at Clermont-Ferrand),
as well as the IX Congress held at Paris in 1900,
by the Working Men's Association for Hygiene
and the Safety of Workers, and the nth Inter-
national Congress for Industrial Accidents (Rome,
1909), have each, as a result of the outcome of
enquiries on the subject, expressed a wish that an
immediate experimental study of industrial
labour should be encouraged and spread.

Imbert l expressed a wish to see workmen take
part in Scientific Congresses where questions
relating to their work, their food, and the acci-

1 A. Imbert, Role des ouvriers dans certains congres scienii-
fiques (La Grande Revue, 10 April, 1909).

THE HUMAN MOTOR 51

dents to which labour was liable, were discussed.
They could thus provide a quantity of most
useful information.

J. M. Lahy l made some experiments among
gem-engravers, with a view to discovering signs of
technical superiority, and amongst industries
demanding well directed rapid action, and volun-
tary attention — short and intense (electricians
for example). He studied the times of nervous
reaction, and discovered amongst these men,
a constant opposition between the times of their
visual, and their auditory, reactions. The first-
class worker shows more rapid visual and slower
auditory reactions than the less skilled operator.
Ch. Richet and Laugier 2 have furnished interesting
studies on the same subject.

We cannot pass over in silence Lahy's valuable
investigations on the psycho-physiology of the
gunner, nor those of de Marchoux, Camus, and
Nepper on the aviation candidates, as well as
those undertaken by Pierre Menard on the

1 J. M. Lahy, L' Adaptation organique dans les etats d' attention
volontaires et brefs. C.R. de I' A cad. des Sciences, May, 1913 ;
Les signes physiques de la superorite professionnelle chez les
dactylographes. Ibid, 2 June, 1913 ; Etude exper de I'adapta-
tion psycho-physiologiques aux actes volontaires brefs et
intenses. Journal de Psychologic, 1913, pp. 220-236. Les
Conditions psycho-physiologiques de I'aptitude au travail
dactylographique. Journal de Physiologie, 5 July, 1913.

2 Ch. Richet and H. Laugier, C.R. de la Soc. de Biologic.
19 April, 1913.

52 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

arterial pressure of soldiers in the trenches. All
these researches demonstrate variations in human
reactions, a difference in aptitudes, whence comes
the necessity for selection in order to obtain the
best return.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 53

II

THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC
MANAGEMENT.

i. — TAYLOR'S STUDIES ON THE ORGANIZATION
OF LABOUR.

It is still only a short time ago that the question
of the organization of labour from the scientific
point of view was first promulgated. The essays
cited above had succeeded only in raising the
question, without in any way solving it. The
problem may be very clearly summed up in a few
words, — find the conditions of work which will
permit of the workman producing the maximum
effective result with a minimum production of
fatigue. And we can partially foresee the
possibility of solving the problem ; thanks to
the scientific methods already in force in the vast
domain of the science of labour. Thus, when the
echoes of the brilliant success of Taylor's methods,
which had rapidly attained celebrity in America,
reached Europe, it gave rise to some anxiety.

The workmen who follow these methods
rapidly, become twice, three times, even four

54 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

times as productive as they originally were.
Let us take some examples. At the Bethlehem
Steel Company each man was able to load, daily,
metal moulds, the total weight of which amounted
to 12 J tons. Taylor succeeded in raising this
number to 47 tons. The work consists in laying
hold of a metal mould 42 kilogrammes in weight,
and of setting it down a few paces further off.
This is how Taylor set about increasing the output.
He had first of all made some preliminary experi-
ments on the speed and duration of human
labour.

Having then found two very strong and good
workmen, he gave them double wages during
the whole time of his experiments, whilst re-
quiring from them their maximum effort and ready
service under strict discipline. These men were
called upon to perform the most diverse tasks.
The times required for each of their movements
was chronographed by means of a time counter.
Thus, it was proved that man can, under these
conditions, daily perform a task varying from
34,000 to 140,000 kilogramme-metres, thus
demonstrating that there is no hard and fast
relation between labour, of whatever kind, and
fatigue, and, on the other hand, that it was ne-
cessary to select the workmen. It recognised the
necessity of eliminating all slow and useless

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 55

movements and of grouping the most rapid and
effective movements.

To return to the example quoted, Taylor,
in collaboration with Barth, established the fact
that a man should only be required to load
during a strictly defined time — say 43% of the
day, and the 57% remainder of the day he should
have his hands empty. But he might be worked
58% of the day if he were called upon to fill half
moulds of 22 kilogrammes. And finally, there
exists a loading limit which he could sustain
throughout the day without fatigue. It is thus,
that, in superintending the duration of move-
ments, and in eliminating those that were useless,
Taylor succeeded in loading 47 tons of metal
moulds instead of I2j tons per man, per day.
This work is equivalent to the loading of 1,156
moulds of about 41 kilogrammes each, during 252
minutes ; thus giving a period of 13 '07 seconds
per mould.

There is, in these experiments, a confirmation
of the information collected by Coulomb, Chau-
veau, Mosso, and Imbert regarding the evalua-
tion of output, and on the economic methods of
the work of the human motor. It would appear
that most of these writings were unknown to the
American engineer, and that he was solely
inspired by Coulomb's system. He also had

56 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

occasion to testify to the enormous amount of
fatigue produced by static labour, often unpro-
ductive, for which he had no use, and which he
tried to eliminate.

A second example may be taken from brick-
laying. According to Gilbreth, who collaborated
with Taylor, for handling piles of bricks, a load
must not exceed 40 kilogrammes for a strong man
(first-class) ; 27-31 kilogrammes for a second-
class man. The bricks and the mortar are placed
by an assistant within reach of the brick-layer's
hand ; the latter should confine himself abso-
lutely to placing them ; the top of the brick
being on a level with the hand, the movement
takes place, following the action of the weight,
without contraction. The pile of bricks should
be at the required height so that the layer need
not stoop to pick them up or to work ; his
assistant should carry the bricks on a two-wheeled
barrow, which would allow of the transport of
216 bricks instead of only 60 (a one- wheeled barrow)
etc. By this method, three times as much work
is accomplished.

The example in the office of Industrial Engineer-
ing l is not less significant. The employees
folded, sealed, and dispatched 20,000 letters per

1 Quoted by Amar, Le Moteur Httmain, Paris 1914, p. 582
(English Translation, G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd.).

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 57

day. The effect of working according to scientific
rules produced the result that the work was
accomplished four times as quickly as before.
One of the girls succeeded in stamping from 100
to 120 envelopes per minute. She piled up the
letters so as to shew the addresses ; the stamps
were divided into strips, so as to follow one another
horizontally — not vertically. She fixed a small
damp sponge to the first finger of her right hand,
and, taking a strip of stamps in the same hand,
damped them whilst removing them with the
thumb and stuck them on the addressed envelopes,
the thumb managing to wet the stamps and to
separate them from the strip ; and the letters
being allowed to fall, by their weight, into a
conveniently placed basket.

Taylor's work l was made known in France by
M. Henri Le Chatelier, Inspector General of Mines,
Professor at the Sorbonne, and at the Ecole
Superieure des Mines, who caused his book on the
principles of scientific management to be trans-
lated into French, and himself wrote the preface
to it. He also wrote a preface to Jules Amar's
book, already quoted, which devotes a large space
to the methods of American engineers. Tech-
nical phenomena which appear quite simple are,
M. Le Chatelier says, extremely complex ; thus,

1 Taylor, F. W., Scientific Management, Harper and Brothers.

58 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

the working of metals on a lathe, of which Taylor
made a special study, depends upon at least
twelve independent variables. Of these variables
the human factor is by far the most important.
It is upon this special point, hitherto hardly
taken into consideration, that Taylor has con-
centrated his chief attention. We must first
get rid of a very widespread prejudice. People
say that good workmen themselves know how to
use their strength to the best advantage. This
is a mistake, as Taylor has proved by the example
of the transport of loads. In that labour, fatigue
is the result of five variables, and it is impossible
for the workman to discover the relative values
of each of these variables by his sensations. In
studying this problem, Taylor has succeeded in
tripling the weight daily transported by the
workman without adding to his fatigue.

A series of articles was recently devoted by the
Revue de Metallurgie to the works of Frederic
W. Taylor. The first of these articles signed by
M. H. Le Chatelier *• is written for the purpose of
bringing the scientific character of the system
into notice.

The name of F. W. Taylor, says Le Chatelier,
will be famous in the history of industrial progress
by three great discoveries : (i) The rapid cutting

1 Le Chatelier, Frederic Winslow Taylor (1856-1915).
Revue de Metallurgie, April 1915, pp. 185-232.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 59

of steel ; (2) Regulations for the working of
metals ; (3) The principles for the scientific
organisation of factories.

It is with this third discovery that we are going
to deal here, and to analyse Le Chatelier's article.
The essential principle of Taylor's system is the
systematic application of the scientific method
in the study of industrial phenomena. He begins
with an exhaustive enumeration of all the factors
upon which each phenomenon depends, of each
operation to be studied, then, after having recog-
nised all the factors at stake, he decides, by experi-
ments and observations as precisely as possible,
the numerical relations existing between the
different facts brought forward. Taylor was
thus brought to the establishment of a certain
number of rules collectively known under the name
of Taylor's system.

One of the essential items in the cost price of an
article is the daily output of the worker. This
output depends upon two very important things :
the determination of the worker to produce
as much as he can and his productive capacity.
The workman frequently purposely limits his
output because he is afraid of having his wages
reduced by his master, and, on the other hand,
he realises that his master, more often than not,
does not know how much work he can normally

60 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

accomplish. The remedy for these two motives
for idleness is to establish by exact measurements
the workman's normal output, and to exact a
definite task from him. One of the essential
points in the system is the creation of a special
department for the fixing of the normal task.
Moreover, premiums may be allotted for the
accomplishment of the normal task. Amongst
the premium systems, is the bonus system, invented
by Gantt. The workman's wages are divided into
two quite distinct parts : a daily wage, which
the workman is sure to receive in any case, and
whatever his daily output may be. In addition
he receives a fixed premium, called " bonus,"
when he accomplishes, in the day, the total amount
of the task which has been pointed out to him as
normal. The foremen, on their side, receive a
premium for each workman working under their
orders, who earns his premium.

The capacity of a workman's production depends
on many circumstances, and particularly on the
nature of the materials placed at his disposal.
Hence the necessity for having an office for the
especial study of the best methods of working.
These methods should be known to the men.
Therefore, it is also necessary to have another
office for the training of overseers capable of
guaranteeing this desideratum.

SCIENTIFIC MANACxEMENT 61

F. W. Taylor (born in 1856, died in 1915), was
descended from a Philadelphia family ; he was,
by turns, apprentice, labourer, master mechanic,
then director of a training college, and finally,
in 1884, Chief Engineer of the Mid vale factories.
He took his diploma at the Stevens Institute of
Technology. In 1890, he left the Midvale
steelworks to become General Director of the
Manufacturing Investment Company which
manufactured mills for the great chemical in-
dustries. He left this Company in 1893, and de-
dicated the whole of his time to the introduction of
his system of organisation into various industries.
F. W. Taylor, says M. Le Ch atelier, was not
only a genius, but he was a man of a noble nature,
faithful to his friends, devoted to the public good,
and in great sympathy with the aspirations of
the working classes. Since Taylor's death, an
International Committee has been formed for
continuing the struggle on behalf of the American
engineer's ideas. The active members of the
committee are : Mr. Carl Barth, consulting
engineer ; Mr. Norris Cooke, director of public
works in the city of Philadelphia ; Mr. Dodge,
president of the Link Belt Co. of Philadelphia,
whose factories are entirely reorganised on
Taylor's plans ; Mr. Hathaway, director of the
Tabor Manufacturing Co., Philadelphia ; one of

62 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

the first factories to adopt Taylor's methods,
and where those engineers, who go to the United
States to study Taylor's system, are sent. The
secretary of the committee is Miss Frances
Mitchell, Boxly, Highland Station, Chestnut Hill,
Philadelphia, U.S.

Let us now examine Taylor's system closely,
basing our enquiries on those of M. Le Ch atelier-
The complete enumeration of all the determining
conditions of no matter what phenomenon, is,
in Taylor's opinion, of capital importance. One
does not a priori take account of the fact, he says,
that all the work of the engineer is rendered
useless if the smallest doubt exists as to one of these
conditions. Now, workmen do not take systematic
note of the determining conditions of their
operations.

Besides, one must know how to measure
the dimensions of the phenomenon under observa-
tion, as, for example, the distinctive mechanical
qualities of a certain steel, the expenditure of
energy in the rolling, etc.

It is thus that Taylor succeeds in establishing
the most economical conditions in labour. One of
the experimental methods systematically employed
by Taylor is that of Chronography. Time is
one of the essential elements in the cost price of
all individual effort ; it must therefore, be measured

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 63

like the other factors. This operation occupies a
' prominent place in the system, more important
than those of other elements by reason of the
double part it plays : first of all, it helps in the
study of experiments ; and it is also the necessary
foundation of the system for the payment of
the workman.

One form of Chronography is the application of
cinematography to the analysis of very rapid
movements, which would escape observations
made by the naked eye. One of Taylor's disciples,
Mr. Gilbreth, has gone back to Marey's chrono-
photographic process, placing on the worker's
hand, whilst he works, a small incandescent
lamp so as to show his movements by a shaft of
light . This method goes by the name of cyclegraph .

M. Le Chatelier says, quite rightly, that, in
spite of all these efforts, these attempts all still^
show a most important gap, — the fatigue of the
worker is not measured. We are referred back
to his declarations. Physiologists will, before
long, be able to give us experimental methods,
on this point, suited to industrial research.

Not satisfied with the results of these experi-
ments, Taylor took a lot of trouble to translate
them by means of algebraic formula.

The difference, therefore, between Taylor's
method and that of other engineers is as follows :

64 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

let us take a particular example, that of leather
belts. According to M. Le Chatelier, before
Taylor's time, a lot of experiments had already
been made with leather belts — chiefly with regard
to measuring their tenacity. But tenacity is not
the only quality needed for the good working of
leather belts. It is only after having tabulated
the speeds of these belts, the frequency of greasing,
their gradual elongation during use, the number
of times they fall, and the length of the stoppages
thus caused in the work of the shops, that
Taylor was able to give the scientific solution of
the problem, that is to say, to define the conditions
under which the maximum service is obtained
with the minimum expenditure.

Amongst the factors of productivity, work-
manship is certainly the most important.

The capricious behaviour of human motive-
power would seem to place this element outside
all law, and enable it to escape the control of
science, says Le Chatelier. Taylor has demon-
strated that the laws discovered by experiments
of this nature, and which correspond to the very
complex organisation of the human being are
subject to a larger number of exceptions than the
laws relating to material things. That, however,
laws of that kind do exist, which apply to the
great majority of people, and which, clearly

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 65

defined, are a great help in guiding them, we
give the following example. Wishing to know
the best plan to adopt in reprimanding a workman,
Taylor said, that the preference should be given to
a fine, without any reproach, the importance of
the fine being in proportion to the gravity of the
offence. That was the most efficacious plan of
action, and at the same time, the least disagreeable.
Certain precautions should, however, be taken.
The fines should, in no case, be entered in the
Principal's cash book, but should go towards
supporting some fund, by which the workers
benefited — towards insurance against accidents,
by preference. In this department, measurement
cannot be as precise, as in the case of machinery ;
it is necessary to draw up statistics, to adopt
measures. The psychology of the working man
does not appear in our instructions. The expenses
incurred by these enquiries are largely repaid
by the increase in productivity.

From these investigations connected with
experimental science, M. Le Ch atelier passes on to
the Psychology of the Workingman and the
organisation of labour, following Taylor's plan.
Scientific Management includes both scientific
experiment and its particular application to the
human factor. Here are the essential points
of his teaching : —

E

66 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

1. It is incorrect to believe, as the politicians
of all countries try to represent, that the
workman is a stupid creature, deaf to all
intelligent reasoning. According to Taylor,
psychology of the working man in no
way differs from that of other men.

2. With modern methods of work, which are
very perfect, but also very complicated,
it is no longer possible for the workman
to discover by intuition, in each particular
case, the most advantageous movements
of the hand. Their settlement, in the
present day, rests with the principals —
the engineers. It is folly, though it is still
often done, to place a workman before a
lathe and require him to find out himself
how to make the best use of it. That
best depends, as Taylor has shewn, upon a
dozen different things. It took him
twenty-five years to disentangle the most
advantageous combinations ; how could a
working man, in a few minutes, divine
the solution of such a complicated problem ?
It is, therefore, indispensable to separate
the preparation of the work, — an essentially
intellectual process, — from its accomplish-
ment, an essentially manual labour. Ac-
cording to Taylor, the methods employed

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 67

in a workshop should be entirely regulated
by a special technical staff, and then taught
to the workmen by the same staff. Therein
lies an entire revolution in our industrial
methods ; very few engineers would possess
the actual knowledge necessary for studying
their workmen's processes, and fewer still
the ability necessary, to put them into
practice before them.

3. Another very important result of Taylor's

studies has to do with the great advantage of
piece-work. The workman sees the exact
amount of work accomplished each day ;
the size of the task is regulated according to
information furnished by previous experience,
with a view to determining the best working
conditions.

4. This change in the organisation of labour
imposes considerable effort and expense
on the management of the factory. But it
exacts nothing more from the workman ;
less initiative on the one hand, more disci-
pline on the other, but not more physical
fatigue. But, as these methods considerably
augment the production of each workman,
the owner is in a position to increase
the wages. The assent of the workman
is obtained by an increase in wage rising

68 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

from 30 to 100% of the mean rate of wages.

The adoption of these principles will permit
of the doubling or trebling of the production.
So that this organisation may be possible,
an office for the preparation and distribution
of the work in the workshops receives the
manager's orders and distributes them to the
right workshops. The regulation of piece-work
involves the necessity of a new organisation —
that of statistics. All this necessitates a very
numerous staff ; the number of clerks is increased,
that of the workmen diminished. That is the
outcome of the organisation of labour, according
to Taylor's system.

The social consequences of this system are
studied at the close of M. Le Ch atelier's article.
These consequences have given rise to numerous
controversies. The principal criticisms brought
forward are :—

1. The increase in production, the essential

purpose of Taylor's system, can only be
obtained by over- working the men ;

2. The workman is brought down to the level of

a machine, his intellectual and social
position is lowered ;

3. The monotony of the work, and the absence

of all intellectual effort, discourages skilled
workmen.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 69

To these objections, Le Chatelier replies.
Taylor's system does not increase, but reduces
over-work ; this is the opinion of all those who
have seen it in operation. The increased pro-
duction is entirely due to regulations independent
of the workman's actions ; a better supervision
of the machinery and belting, a more regular
supply of the materials, the employment of
better tools, etc. It is, moreover, incorrect to
say, that the rate of mortality amongst the
workmen is higher than heretofore, as Phila-
delphian statistics shew when compared to
those of Paris.

The assertion that the workman is brought
down to the level of a machine is incorrect in
every particular ; it is the dexterous movements
employed in Taylor's method which results in
producing the skilled workman.

Another sentimental objection, says Le Chatelier,
may seem more specious. It is sad to see the
artistic workman disappear — the man capable of
exercising all the branches of his calling, of
working in stone, in wood, and in metal, and of
producing such works of art as adorn our Gothic
churches. Why then, not regret the slaves of
antiquity ? (Le Chatelier). Did not they build
magnificent palaces, temples, and mausoleums,
which to this day arouse our admiration ? This is

70 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

true, but the artisans of the Middle Ages dwelt in
kennels, without air or light, were badly fed and
liable to epidemics. To-day, the working man
has a healthy home, is often as well fed as his
employer, etc. The specialisation of work and
the employment of machinery have given him
all these good things. In the course of a century
his wealth has increased ten-fold. Taylor invites
him to double this again, and people want to oblige
him to decline this gift out of respect to a few
rather antiquated principles. On the contrary,
progress will consist in more intensive methods of
production, in reducing the length of the working
day — to an eight hours' day at once, later on,
perhaps, to a six hours' day.

It is untrue to assert that specialisation, and
the constant repetition of the same work disgusts
the men. That is to contradict our daily ex-
perience, says Le Chatelier. What more mono-
tonous than the calling of a forwarding agent,
or even that of the head employe in a big firm ?
And yet the number of candidates for such berths
is enormous, and those privileged to hold them
are the objects of envy. Then, the farm la-
bourer, each day following the furrows of his
plough, does not question the monotony of his
work. All his life-long he repeats the process,
without being any the worse. According to the

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 71

experience of competent heads of industries,
it would be just the same with workmen. Hardly
will you find one in a hundred capable of realising
the monotony of his work. The workman per-
forms his work without thinking about it, quietly
dreaming about his own little affairs, his plans,
etc. (see our criticisms below).

To wind up, Le Ch atelier maintains that
Taylor's system will advance more rapidly in
the future. The slowness of its development
is due to the necessity for perfect accord between
the masters and the foreman of the workshops
before it can be got into working order. At
present, for two men, both imbued with new
doctrines to meet in the same factory, is rare.

The second article published by the Revue
de Metallurgie, is that by C. B. Thomson,1 Pro-
fessor at Harvard University, on the Scientific
Organization of Labour, he summarises the principal
publications issued up to now, on Taylor's system
and gives numerous examples of its industrial
application.

This bibliography by itself forms quite a litera-
ture, and includes articles on the theory of scientific
management, on its action, its scientific organisa-
tion, on railways, on methods, on the human
factor in scientific organisation, and on work-

1 Revue de Metallurgie, Vol. XII, April 1915 pp. 233-315.

72 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

men's syndicates. The most important are
those by Taylor himself, notably his Principles
of Scientific Management and Shop Management,
as well as his Art of Cutting Metals. He draws
attention to the prejudice which permits in be-
lieving that the improvement in the methods of
labour will reduce the number of workmen
employed in the industry. This was the com-
plaint at one time urged against machinery,
yet no one would now abolish the latter. It will
be the same with scientific management, the
improvements in working methods only bringing
passing inconveniences in their train, when de-
veloped too rapidly, causing profound distur-
bance in the existing economic conditions.

Thomson thus sums up (according to Kendall),
the processes which unite in increasing the work-
man's output.

i. Elementary Analysis of Operations. — This
systematic study allows of the elimination
of useless movements, of the combination
of the most advantageous movements, of
modifying certain imperfections in the
machinery.

For example, in a factory for lighting apparatus,
it sufficed to carry the pieces to be manipulated
to the operator, arranged in a box, and placed
20 centimetres from his left hand, in order to

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 73

perceptibly increase his output ; until then, his
pieces had been scattered higgledy piggledy
round him.

2. Selection of Workmen. — Workmen differ
greatly in their aptitude for the same work.
These differences may be sufficient to shew
a variation of 50% in their output. To
take book-binding as an example, it will be
granted that a big, strong girl is best
suited for the carrying of heavy parcels of
books, whilst for gilding, one with very
delicate, careful fingers should be chosen.

3. Training of Workmen. — The workman has to
be taught the improved methods.

4. — The Employment of Good Tools.
5. Stimulants. — The workman is incited, by
means of a premium which increases his
wage, to supply as large an output, as the
implements placed at his disposal will permit
of.

According to Carlton's opinion (quoted by Mr.
Thomson), up to this point, the scientific manage-
ment of labour has only taken the point of view
of one of the parties interested into account ;
to succeed, it is absolutely necessary that, from the
start, there should be complete accord between
the masters and men, and this accord can only
be obtained by accepting the intervention of

74 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

syndicates, and by admitting workmen's delegates
into the Councils of the management.

The following are the other articles in La
Revue de Metallurgie : Annual Report by M.
M. L. Cooke, which shews the services rendered
by Taylor's method in the administration of a
large town ; Mr. Renold's memorandum on the
Scientific Management of Factories (I' Organisation
scientifique des usincs) ; that by Mr. Allingham
on the same subject, and finally, that by Mrs.
Christine Frederiks relating to the scientific
management of a house. Scientific methods may
also benefit domestic life. The first thing to be
considered is the standardisation of the required
movements . Movements should be regulated,
Mrs. Frederiks pleads, even in the washing of
dishes. It is useless to lift plates from right to
left by crossing one arm over the other. Every-
thing one does should be examined so as to settle
what is essential and to see if it answers its purpose
properly, and without annoyance to the operator.
The authoress made use of these methods when
organising her model kitchen at Applecroft.
She gives the principles upon which she grouped
her utensils in relation to the place where they
would be used and with reference to their normal
use. Secondly, there comes that very important
question— the fixing of a normal time-table. A

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 75

list would facilitate the daily and weekly tasks,
etc.

Finally, the normalisation of purchases, of
the staff, and of management, have their allotted
place.

The article is most interesting, and contains
any amount of excellent advice having for its
end the scientific organisation of that most
important side of life, the home of the family.

The only objection which we can make to the
system is that the mistress of the house must,
herself, be able to direct the work required, no
matter what it may be. This specialization
in such a number of departments would become
too onerous for the mistress and would confine
her absolutely to the sphere of the house to the
exclusion of all other interests ; it is besides
opposed to the evolution of the family in modern
society, an evolution which tends to eliminate
a host of functions from house management,
and to make co-operative duties of those which
used to devolve on the house mistress alone.
But there is nothing to be said against the various
groups — co-operatives for example, whose spheres
extend beyond the narrow limits of a family
profiting by these Councils. Also, family life
itself should be Taylorised in the sense of order,
economy and better management.

76 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

2. — THE OPINION THAT SHOULD BE FORMED OF
THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT.

To resume, after this account, our personal
opinion as to Taylor's system. This system is
most certainly indisputably scientific in character,
and all those who desire, henceforth, to study the
organisation of labour, will be unable to ignore
his system. He came at the right time, and
although Taylor was ignorant of much of the
scientific work which had been accomplished
in the physiological laboratories of Europe,
thanks to his personal experiences he achieved
distinct results, of which many are only a confirma-
tion of general laws established by scientific
research. It seems certain that from the
technological point of view, he was entirely
successful, and the proof lies in the enormous
augmentation of production which he was, in
almost every case, able to obtain. This is no
small result, and it is indisputably true. But
here our eulogy ends. To praise Taylor's system
and to desire its general introduction into the
industrial world one would have to feel sure on
many points, of which several are still obscure,
and others are debatable, if not to be condemned.
Certain it is that the scientific management of

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 77

labour is an inevitable necessity, but it remains
to be proved whether Taylor's system, the
first to be advocated in this field of enquiry, is
just the very best system, that which was impa-
tiently awaited by all those who wished to see
science penetrate into the region of industrial
labour, in order that it might be reorganised for
the great benefit of society.

From our point of view, we can charge Taylor's
system with three great faults :—

i. As the most convinced partisans of Taylor's
system affirm, a big gap exists in Taylor's
estimates, which is the absence of scientific
information concerning the fatigue of the
workers. Such information as does exist
depends upon the statements of the workers,
which are unreliable. This gap may be
imagined ; the calculation of fatigue is a
very delicate process and can only be
attempted by physiologists trained in such
studies. Now, that was the first thing that
should have been done, seeing that Taylor's
system upsets the usual habits, changes
the movements, quickens them in some
cases, and imprints upon the human motor
an absolutely new action. It is not enough
that, in certain cases, this factor has been
taken into consideration. Thus Earth

78 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

succeeded in formulating the laws of the
relationship between labour and fatigue ;
Gilbreth noticed that the two-wheeled
barrow causes less fatigue, because it is
better balanced, than the one- wheeled
barrow, etc. But, as Le Chatelier says,
these statements are insufficient. In his
book, The Human Motor, Amar also
considers that Taylor's method is insuffi-
cient from the physiological point of view,
the learned American not having had the
means by which to estimate the amount
of fatigue, to know the speed, the rhythm,
the effort which are exacted by even the
smallest expenditure of energy, in a maxi-
mum of labour. And yet, a few pages
below, Amar asserts that " the art of
working is thus constituted and firmly
established on scientific foundations."
As a matter of fact, this assertion goes far
beyond the facts, the question of fatigue
being essential and the charge of over-
work having been, in a great number of
cases, brought against Taylor and his
disciples.

With a view to solving this problem,
an International Committee made up partly
of physiologists and partly of engineers,

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 79

and of absolutely independent sociologists
appointed by a recognised official Institution
of repute should be charged with the
examination of fatigue amongst men
employed in the various industries that
have adopted Taylor's system. It is only
after enquiry, and in the event of a favour-
able answer, that Taylor's system will
deserve the name of " scientific," and
may be considered to be free from all
defect.

This system offers no guarantee to the
workman in that which relates to his own
advantage. It is true that, at the present
time, the workman enjoys 'a rise in wage
and a reduction in his hours of work, when
he adopts Taylor's system, but it is to be
feared that when everybody is working
under this system of scientific management,
these advantages may suddenly cease.
The fear of general discontent, say even a
strike, might not suffice to insure the
continuance of the increased wages. There-
fore, here again, some reform is required,
and it is necessary as Carlton (quoted by
Thomson), insists that workmen's syndi-
cates should take part in the councils of the
management.

80 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

3. The theory of " premiums," which is part of

the system itself, makes it probable that,

to a certain extent, over-work is almost

sure to prevail. In order to urge the

workman to produce his maximum output

Taylor makes use of too strong a stimulant,

an infallible one even, that of direct gain

attached to increased labour. As the

feeling of fatigue is not irrevocable, and may

be concealed by increased effort, the

workman may rapidly reach the limits of

over-pressure and be unaware of it until

the moment when, quite exhausted and good

for nothing, he is turned out of the factory

which had dazzled him with visions of the

most extraordinary and attractive benefits.

This reproach has been formulated against

Taylor's system of scientific management,

many times, by its adversaries (" the

premium of over-pressure ").

The principles of this system are, moreover,

opposed to those of the progress of hygiene,

which tends to become more and more general

even in the case of individuals. This freedom of

the individual to overwork, is opposed to eugenics

and to all those sciences which have for their aim

the betterment of the race. Finally, the reward

to those who work the best is not a proceeding

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 81

to be advocated from the moral point of view, for
those who are trained on such a principle make
it the mainspring of their actions under other
conditions.

Such are the fundamental faults of the system,
and doubtless many others would be discovered
in it, were it to be examined on the spot. On the
other hand, we think many of the attacks levelled
against the system are worthless. " It degrades
the human being, because of the monotony of the
mechanical actions which it enforces," etc.
That is an argument of the ignorant and merits
no attention. Neither can the monotony of the
work itself, and the absence of any intellectual
element, be considered as criticisms. Le Ch atelier
refutes such charges, but we cannot, in this matter,
agree with his point of view. It is clear that his
example of the rate of mortality amongst the
workmen in Philadelphia being no higher than
in Paris, is no argument. On the other hand,
if one does not regret the abolition of slaveiy
(see p. 69), that is not solely on account of
the unhealthy conditions under which the slaves
lived, but chiefly on account of the conditions
under which the work was performed (labour
" by compulsion "). With regard to the objection
to the employment of forwarding agent, or of the
office clerk, it is in the bitter struggle for existence,

F

82 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

and in the fact that many men are unqualified
for any other form of employment, that the
true reasons nust be looked for to account for
the number of applicants for these posts, and not
in any love of monotonous work.

Would that all labour might be as monotonous
as that carried on in the bosom of nature, amidst
its ever changing charms, and its sensations
of life, liberty and beauty.

As a matter of fact, the monotony of labour
is not a reproach that can touch Taylor's system,
any more than the absence of the intellectual
element and the increase of discipline with the
reduction of individuality and spontaneity. The
charge of monotony may be brought against all
manufacturing industries — the monotony only
differs in degree. That fault is irreducible, like
that which relates to the machines themselves.
Industrial labour is, by its very essence, monoton-
ous, and very unintellectual, tending inevitably
towards an ever greater and ever more complete
automatism. The physiologists of industry are
well aware of this. They recognise the difference
between manual labour, such as is taught in the
schools, from the pedagogic point of view, and that
which is performed by the workman, from the
industrial point of view. In the first case, it is a
question of educative action, bringing pressure

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 83

to bear on the psycho-motor centres, of which
the hand is the only trusty instrument. Also
it would seem necessary to vary the nature of the
work, in order to bring a larger number of brain
cells into play and, as soon as the work becomes
easy and begins to become automatic, it should
be stopped and something fresh commenced.

It is quite a different question with the work-
man. He works continuously at the same craft,
always the same, which he brings to the greatest
possible point of perfection, and his tendency,
desire, and aim, is the greatest possible autonomy.
To-day, the friends of the people know quite
well that industrial labour cannot be a source of
mental evolution for the labourer. This con-
viction urges them to further economise the
workman's strength, to reduce his hours of work
by improving the work itself, and by giving him
the consolation of a healthy home in the country,
and a training able to supplement the autonomy
demanded by his role as an industrial worker,
and which the needs of our civilization render
absolutely necessary. And it is thus that
humanitarian claims, are now, on many points,
based on science.

Thus does Taylor's system present itself to the
present writer. We have not stripped it of its
scientific character, but we do perceive that it

84 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

exhibits numerous faults and gaps in its concep-
tion. Is this system capable of being sufficiently
perfected and improved to permit of its some day
occupying a leading place in the organisation of
labour, or does it, on the contrary, possess fun-
damental errors, which will prevent its general
acceptance, and condemn it to failure ? Ulterior
research can alone enable us to answer these
questions. However that may be, this system
should, at the present hour, claim the attention
of manufacturers, and after the actual crisis
through which we are now passing is over, and
the need for new enterprise and an accelerated
productivity makes itself felt, the scientific
organisation of labour will become a greater
necessity than ever before. One can only regret
that, as yet, scientific methods have not given
us the decisive answer we seek, and that the
solution of the problem, at present, is only em-
pirical. . . In any event, Taylor's system, in
spite of its many advantages, should only be
applied with great caution and tact, since it is
suspected of over-pressure, which may prove
harmful to the race.

At the time of going to press with this book,
we note the recently published work by J. M.
Lahy.1 This writer advances many objections

1 J. M. Lahy, Le systaae Taylor et la physiologic du travail
profcssionnel, Paris 1916, Matton, 198 pages.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 85

to Taylor's system, his conception of labour
being spoilt by a threefold error : psychological,
sociological, and industrial ; he improves me-
thods, not with a view to the well-being of the
workman, but in order to insure the super-pro-
duction of each. Work, in the factories re-
organised according to Taylor's methods, is
based upon constraint and discipline, which
are the opposites of invention and lead to fatigue ;
the workman is only looked upon as part of the
system. The abstract question of scientifically
determining the worker's fatigue has no place
in his system, and in as far as workers are con-
cerned, he pre-assumes them to be idle. The
problem of selection, of which Taylor thinks so
much, does not really aim at superior workman-
ship, but only at the result of movements, so that
Taylor has not set before each industry the double
criterion of superior workmanship with minimum
fatigue, though this would be the claim made for
really scientific experiments. Taylor's methods
shew progress in some respects, but the work
is not produced more perfectly, it is only more
rapid.1 It is, after all, the yield of the worker
which regulates the duration and intensity of the
work, and when all is said and done the results

1 This greater speed in work, the quality of which is in no
respect lowered, is nevertheless a real improvement, but
that alone should not satisfy us.

86 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

are often disappointing. Taylor employed, for
human labour, the same tests that he used for
mechanical work, which is a mistake, because of
fatigue, which intervenes in the action of the
human motor. His disciples, like himself, only
examined this problem theoretically. Taylor knew
nothing of physiology, his study of motion is
far from being as precise as Marey's.1 Inventions
said to be by him or his disciples were really
Marey's. His system contains numerous gaps,
it is incomplete, it has not entirely transformed
the organisation of labour ; his system does
take the workman into account, but it leads to
the depreciation of the skilled worker. His
system of wages and premiums is an encourage-
ment to over-production, and consequent over-
fatigue. Of psychic problems, of all that concerns,
for example, the rhythm of labour, and rest,
both essentially individual matters, Taylor was
ignorant. Many industries he did not study

1 It is not without interest to remember all that we owe to
Marey, the inventor of the Graphic method and of Chromo-
photography. Lahy reminds us that side by side with his
classical works, known to all physiologists, Marey tried
some experiments on industrial labour, and promoted o'her
researches in that domain in his laboratory in the pare des
Princes or in the Institute that bears his name. More
especially see : E. J. Marey, Travail de I'homme dans les
prof ess ions Manuelles. Revue d'Hygiene alim .uitaire, 1904,
p. 197. — Id. L'eco;;;o;nie de travail et I'elasticiie. La Revue
dus Idees, 14 May, 1904. Ch. Fremont, Etude experimental*!
du .ivetage. Soc. d'encouragement pour 1'Industrie nationale,
Paris, 1906.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 87

at all. Also, Taylor invented nothing essential,
he only improved certain things. The chrono-
graphy of elementary movements, which is the
original idea of the system, is not sufficient and
would not be able to replace the terrestial chrono-
graphy previously in use.

Many of these charges can be substantiated,
and we have already stated our opinion on the
subject of fatigue. Still, Lahy talks of an
increase of fatigue as though it were a proved
and indisputable fact. We cannot share his
opinion when he pretends that the chronography
of elementary movements exacts a degrading
submission on the part of the workman which he
would not accept. Now, says Lahy, if the various
measures so lauded by Taylor are not irrevocably
united, we are no longer in the presence of
Taylor's system. We consider that Taylor's
system is incomplete, many industries have
never been studied, the part played by fatigue
has not been estimated. That is an undeniable
fact. But those who follow Taylor may correct
the errors of his system and perfect it. It is,
says Le Chatelier,1 for the physiologists to
determine the role played by fatigue. Taylor
did what he could. Besides, Lahy thinks, too,

1 J. Amar, Organisation phvsiologiqtte du travail, 1917
Paris, Dunod et Pinat. Preface by M. Le Chateiier.

88 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

that in what Taylor did, there was no preconceived
intention of over-working the men ; his work
was absolutely sincere.

Taylor himself said that scientific management
did not necessarily lead to a great invention nor
to the discovery of startling new facts ; it
consists in a certain combination of elements not
yet realized, and in the grouping of analysed and
classified ideas in the form of laws and regulations
constituting a science.

We will conclude by saying that no political
party should derive any benefit from the scientific
management of labour, but society as a whole.
Taylor's system, completed on some points,
improved in others, put into harmony with the
distribution of energy and with psychology,
will only receive a definite sanction on the day
when it puts itself in agreement with the economic
organisations of labour, such as the workman's
syndicates and the co-operatives.

These problems will continue to be of essential
importance until that far distant day when
machines will be able to undertake the labour
until now accomplished by man. But at the
present time all scientific experiments concerning
the management of labour agree in according
to the " human " factor the preponderating role.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 89

3. — THE FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL IN THE
DETERMINATION OF APTITUDES.

We are still dealing with the same question —
the utilization of labour, and the fatigue it
causes, when we turn our attention to the experi-
ments which, for the last twenty-five years, have
had the child as their object and have led to the
founding of a new department of science,
Pedology (Science of study of the Child). At
the International Congress of Hygiene and
Demography held at Brussels in 1903, I insisted
on a preliminary medical examination of working
men (see above) with the object of gauging their
aptitudes and of guiding them in their choice of a
career. All those who have mistaken their path
in life become an easy prey to over-work ; their
productivity is greatly reduced and, as a conse-
quence, their prosperity. In this unsuitability
for certain occupations may be detected some of
the causes of over-work and social unproductivity.

This point of view has become considerably
more general than it used to be, and the study of
pedology has shewn us the necessity for carrying
back this examination to a much earlier age, of
making it obligatory in preparatory schools or
even earlier still, and of bringing it to bear in

90 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

every department of life, physically, intellectually,
and morally. The medico-pedagogic inspection,
such as has been carried out in the schools of most
countries, for some years now, is a step forward
towards the solution of the problem, but will
not be sufficient in itself. The question is,
as a matter of fact, the determining of aptitudes
and inaptitudes, and those which a medical
examination is able to disclose, only constitute
one side of the examination (organs of sense,
growth, physical constitution, maladies, in short
only the authropometric and pathological points
of view). The vast field of intellectual aptitudes,
properly so called, artistic and technical aptitudes,
remains unexplored.

As regards the two first groups we will refer
the reader to our books,1 previously published
on this subject. As in this chapter we only
propose to deal with the work of the artisan, we
shall only examine aptitudes of a technical order.

1 See especially : La Revue Psychologique, published by us
since 1908 (Brussels) ; les Travaux du premier Coxgres
international de Pedologie (the Work of the first international
Congress of Pedology) which met at Brussels in 1911, and
whose two volumes we were instrumental in publishing, as also
the publication of the International Faculty of Pedology
Faculte Internationals de Pedologie} of Brussels. This institu-
tion of which we undertook the management is a school for
higher education especially intended for the initiation of
modern teachers into all the sciences and technology of the
child. Subsequent events in Belgium have forced as to close
this institution, but with the firm intention of re-opening
it some day.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 91

The present state of the science of pedology
only requires that tentative measurements of a
special kind should be taken, not only in the
primary schools, but also in the technical schools
(Industrial Training Colleges). The first are
intended for those pupils who have not yet chosen
a career, and who put out feelers in every
direction. It is in these schools that aptitudes
are awakened. It is time that the greater or
less degree of skill shewn by the pupils during
their studies, should serve as a guide to intelligent
and competent teachers, but the estimate thus
formed is insufficient by itself, and the present
progress of science is opposed to a purely empirical
opinion. In every domain, empiricism must
inevitably be replaced by scientific information.
This is a universal law, the realization of which
ensures progress. Now, at this moment, there
exist a series of measurements, possible experi-
ments by which we can take the measure of all
the senses which intervene in the various mechani-
cal actions : the diverse forms and degrees of
tangible sensitiveness, of sensitiveness to pressure,
of the sense of resistance, of precision of movements,
of their speed, of the various forms of the kinesthetic
sense (muscular sense). These senses may be
described under the general name of " mechanical
senses."

92 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

Let us to these add sight, with all the elements,
which includes : the sense of proportion, sensitive-
ness to form, colour, light, perspective. In passing
on to the higher psychic qualities, we see the
enormous importance of the power of attention,
of a technical memory, and of mechanical imagina-
tion, where there is a question of invention.
One must not ignore the value of design, of model-
ling, of wood-carving, of sculpture, and finally of
taste, and the aesthetic sense (decoration), which
plays a preponderating part in the art-worker's
labours. All these faculties, including those
which want of space prevents our enumerating
here, maybe examined, studied, gauged, and their
diverse combinations go to the making of those
complicated powers which we call aptitudes.
What should we say of a society wherein everyone
should have followed the line of his tastes, of his
leanings and aptitudes, where each would occupy
the place best suited to him, and wherein the
various occupations were allotted to the " most
apt " ? Such a society would be reformed
from top to bottom, in the sense of greater equity,
greater productivity, and greater happiness.

This principle of " the most apt " should
regulate our society of the future. This principle
is not that of equality, but justice is not the
equivalent of complete equality. Justice is

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 93

opposed, in any case, to the extremes of inequality
—to real injustice, such as one sees in the present
day.

We should like to formulate a second resolution
(the first being the scientific examination of Tay-
lor's system), and that is to see that the " science
of aptitudes " is taught, forming a chapter in
individual experimental psychology, and pene-
trating into all those institutions whose duty it is
to train our technical and industrial workers of
the future, as well as the workers in art, and
that with the object of discovering real talents
and of directing them into those channels which
shall be the most favourable to themselves and
to society.

94 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

III
THE POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK.

I. — THE VALUATION OF THE POWER AND WORK OF
THE RIGHT HAND AND THE LEFT.

The Anthropometric Comparison of the Sexes.

The problem of right-handedness and left-
handedness far surpasses the limits of muscular
power ; it constitutes a chapter in cerebral
psycho-physiology. But the most noticeable
fact, that which in the first blush claims general
attention, is certainly the different powers con-
stantly exhibited between the two hands, with the
result that most people are " right-handed,"
and a very insignificant minority " left-handed."

Here, we shall only examine their difference
in strength. The following chapters will deal
with other points, and, for the various questions
touching right-handedness and left-handedness,
we will refer the reader to former publications.1

1 J . L. loteyko, Theorie psycho-physiologique de la droiterie ;
Revue philosophique, juin et juillct 1910, and V. Kipiani,
Ambidextrie, 103 p., Lebeque, Brussels, Alcan, Paris, 1912.

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 95

We must remember that asymmetry has not
only to do with movement, but also extends to
the various sensorial and psychic functions.
Thus, Van Biervliet, l when experimenting on
the students of the University of Ghent, discovered
in the muscular sense, in sharpness of vision,
and of hearing, and sensitiveness of touch, a
degree of asymmetry, which he calculated at
one tenth.

If, he says, we denote by the number ten the
sensitiveness of the more developed side, which
is the right side in the case of the right-handed
man, and the left in the case of the left-handed)
then the number nine will about denote the
opposite side.

In passing on to the question of motor-power,
we must distinguish between the test of strength
and the test of endurance. The first may be
reckoned by the dynamometer, an instrument
that registers the momentary effort of the pressure
of the hand. It measures the strength of the per-
son, his power of making a great effort, but does
not calculate the endurance. This latter may be
estimated by the use of one of the most scientific
processes of measurement, namely, Mosso's ergo-
graph, which we ourselves have used in many experi-

1 Van Biervliet, Bull, de I' A cad. Roy. dc Betgique, classe
des Sciences, 1897-1901.

96 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

ments whilst studying different conditions of work.
The experiment consists in systematically raising
(following the beats of a metronome), a weight
(from 2-5 kilograms), by means of the flexion
of the middle finger. This experiment may be
made up to the limit of extreme fatigue. The
graphic method allows of the registering of the
extent (height) to which it is raised, and an easy
calculation (multiply the total height to which
it is raised by the weight), gives the amount of
mechanical work performed in kilogramme-metres,
whilst the time taken to produce complete fatigue
is an indication of individual endurance. These
two proofs are, therefore, very different in kind,
and it would be interesting to make parallel
studies of the behaviour of different people in
this respect. These comparative experiments
have been made in Belgium, a country where the
number of left-handed people seems to be con-
siderable ; far in excess of the generally accepted
number which is from 2-3%.

As regards the measurement of strength by the
dynamometer, my experiments on 140 students of
both sexes at the University of Brussels 1 shewed
that the stronger side is to the weaker side
as 1,000 to 841 and this as much amongst the

1 J. loteyko, Mesure de la force dynamcmeiriqus des deux
wains, amongst 140 students of the Brussels University. Mc-
moires de la Societe J'anthropologie de Bruxelles, 1903-4.

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 97

right-handed as the left-handed students, in
other words, the figure which we propose to call
the dynamometric sign, seems to be constant,
even though the average of a sufficiently large
group of subjects is taken. This average is 51
kilograms for the stronger hand, and 43 kilograms
for the weaker.

In this figure we include students of both sexes.
The difference between the two sides is, therefore,
an average of 16%, when it is a question of the
test of strength.

Let us examine some other figures relating to
dynamometric power.

Dynamometric Strength of young people of
about twenty years of age (Belgian).

Difference be-

Quetelet (1834) | ^tween the two

Left 37. Kg.2 L ^

J hands, 2 Kg.i.

loteyko (1903) (Right 51. Kg. 4 [Difference

Students (Left 43. Kg.oj 8 Kg.4.

loteyko (10,08) (_

Students in ^ 52- Kg.oj Difference

Normal schools!^ 47- Kg.5| 4 Kg.5.

This table shews several important facts : there
has been a marked increase of strength since
Ouetelet's time, which may be set down to a
good physical education.

G

98 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

In the second place the want of symmetry
has also considerably increased, and this is more
marked amongst the students of the University
than amongst .the pupils in the normal schools.
The degree of asymmetry also increases with the
age of the children ; Schuyten, who verified this
fact, is alarmed at it, seeing that it is correlative
to an absence of symmetry in all the organs
and all the functions.

As regards the power of endurance or of
resistance to fatigue some work was done,
under our advice, by Schouteden,1 who experi-
mented on 18 male and 7 female students in
the Brussels University — pupils in our course of
experimental psychology. The interesting thing
is, that the product of mechanical work of the two
sides (ergographic sign) is the same amongst the
right-handed and left-handed workers, if the
general average is taken. By including the 25
cases in a common measure, a difference of 20%
is obtained in favour of the stronger side (4
kilogrammes 562, and 3 kilogrammes 246).

The result of these experiments is that the degree
of asymmetry is not identical for these different
tests.

It is 10% lower for the various senses (muscular,

1 H. Schouteden, Ergographie de la Main droite et de la
main gauche. Annales de la Societe Roy. des Sciences Nied.
et nat. de Bruxelles, XIII, 1904.

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 99

tactile, visual and auditory). It rises markedly
in the test of strength to 16% ; and it mounts
at a considerable and disproportionate rate in
the test of endurance or resistance to fatigue
viz., 29%. The table below represents these
results.

Bi -manual index (degrees of asymmetry)

(STUDENTS).

/ Sensitiveness of touch \
Table difference

muscle; _T
Sensorial J }• Van Biervhet

Index " Slghtj 10%

I ,, » hearing)

Index of Strength J. loteyko 16%

Index of Resistance to fatigue H. Schouteden 29%
(Endurance)

We will not generalise on these results ; the
different co-efficients may vary according to
circumstances, but it seems probable that the
tendency of the phenomena would remain the
same.

This difference of strength and of endurance,
between the two hands, is, therefore, very con-
siderable amongst even students who do no
manual work. And we must not lose sight of the
fact that this is only one method x by which,
in certain cases, individual differences may

1 \\in Biervliet alone asserts that the bilateral relation
of sensibilities remains constant for each individual, even.

ioo THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

acquire a much higher rate. Those who have made
experiments of this nature must often have been
struck by the inert aspect of the left hand, in the
case of many people. Besides, they say : "I
can do nothing with that hand ! that doesn't
count."

In our opinion, these results should be verified
by the examination of the strength and powers of
endurance amongst artisans in different industries,
in those which require the use of only one hand
and in those which are ambidextrous. We
should thus obtain a better utilisation of physical
aptitudes. We might even go in for individual
training, and, by suitable exercises, correct
any excessive asymmetry.

We will now compare the degree of muscular
asymmetry amongst men and amongst women.

According to Klippel, Pitres, Ferrari, d'Almeida
de Roche, etc., the woman has a greater tendency
towards the equalisation of the two sides, which
may even lead to the predominance of the left
hand. It is for that reason that Klippel calls
the right cerebral hemisphere, the feminine brain,
and the left cerebral hemisphere, the masculine
brain. D'Almeida de Roche considers that
woman is functionally left-handed, whilst man is
right-handed. Under the influence of great
fatigue, produced by a protracted use of the

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 101

ergograph, the predominance of the right side in
man, and of the left side in woman, clearly
appears.

According to Ferrari,1 the predominance of
the left hand is most seen under ergographic
experiments. Ferrari's female cases are of the
most use as regards the work done by the right
hand, and with the dynamometer, they exhibit
greater strength on that side. But with the
ergograph it is just the opposite : the flexors of
the left hand possess very considerable powers of
endurance, much greater, comparatively, than is
the case with men.

The ergogram given by the left hand is not
only greater than that furnished by the right,
but the woman has no sensation of fatigue with
the left ; women can, at command, retrace a new
curve with their left hands, possessing the charac-
teristics of the curve made by the right hand.

Now, let us compare the sexiial signs of strength
and of powers of resistance in the two sexes.

As regards the sexual signs of strength, measured
by the dynamometer, (the general comparison
between a woman's and a man's strength), it is,
according to our calculations, 570-1,000, that is,
a difference of 43%.

1 Ferrari, Kicerche ergogyafichc nella douna, Rivista speri-
mentale di Freniatria, XXIV 1898.

102 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

As to the sexual signs of the powers of re-
sistance, measured by the ergograph (the general
comparison between a woman's powers of
endurance in work, and those of a man), it is
639-1,000, that is a difference~of 36%, according
to Schouteden's experiments.

The result of these experiments is, that the
ergographic power is proportionally more developed
amongst women than amongst men. Amongst
women, their powers of endurance when at work
give them the strength for momentary effort ;
but woman is more able to produce a
sustained moderate effort than to make a great
momentary effort.

These experimental conclusions agree with
Mosso's statements. The size of a muscle is a
distinct thing from its capacity to furnish a large
amount of work over a long period ; it will
enable a man to raise a heavier weight, but it will
not enable him to lift a moderate weight a greater
number of times. The different results which
are observable amongst women and amongst
men, betwen the two methods of the quantitative
reckoning of mucular strength, therefore, furnish
us with a means of appreciating the qualitative
difference which exists between the two sexes
from the point of view of strength : as oft
repeated moderate effort suits the woman better

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 103

than a maximun effort made all at once. This
idea, which may be applied to industrial labour,
acquires quite a peculiar interest at the present
time, when women's labour has become so much
more general. We see the necessity of a most
careful selection of working women with regard
to their muscular powers, for individual differences
are very clearly marked.

Ever since 1899, we have insisted on the absence
of a complete correlation between the dynamo-
metric test and the ergographic test, even from the
point of view of the individual.

This idea is in perfect accord with other observa-
tions which clearly establish the fact that the
woman has greater powers of endurance than the
man, even from the absolute point of view. Hence
the quotient of mortality amongst women is less
than that amongst men, except during certain
periods of life ; 16 women of 103 years of age
may be reckoned against one man of the same age.

At all ages there are more women than men,
although more boys than girls are born. At the
end of the first year, of 100,000 born alive of both
sexes, the difference in favour of the female sex
is 2,677, and this difference attains its maximum,
6,739, at the age of 67 years. Certain Insurances
which grant pensions, increase the annual pre-
mium payable by women by 50%. There is an

104 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

excess in masculine births and an excess in fe-
minine life.

Other proofs of this are supplied by the very
causes which determine sex.

Amongst these causes there is one, the im-
portance of which is sufficiently well proved.
It is recognised in the animal world, as well as
in the human, that the determination of sex is
made under the influence of nutritive conditions,
and that good conditions favour the production of
the feminine type. The statistics collected by
Rene Worms l in France, are very significant in
this respect. He studied, not only the cases of
children born alive, but also of still-born children ;
these latter had never been included in statistics,
which led to the latter being incorrect.

The theory of nutrition enables us to take into
account the feebleness of the male as well as the
excess of masculine births. Nutrition being
dependent on economic conditions, the con-
necting link between biological and social pheno-
mena was seized. According to Worms, the
progress of wealth and general well-being reduces
both the birth-rate and the number of male births.
The poor departments of France (Lozere, Mor-
bihan) shew an equality in grown-up males. In

1 K. Worms, La scxualite dans Irs iidissuncrs /;-</;/r,.'/.v.s.
Vol. de 237 p, Paris 1912, Giard and Brirn .

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 105

Paris the excess of males falls to the minimum
when the parents are of the same age, whilst it
rises again when the disparity of age between
husband and wife is greater. It is higher
amongst working men than amongst employers.
It went up slightly after the war of 1870. To
these returns, we will add that the figures we have
had occasion to collect during the present world-
war, shew a larger excess of male births than is
usual.

We'l before WTorms, Niceforo, the Italian,1
seems, in his book on the poorer classes, which
was published in 1905, to partly maintain the
same thesis. William J. Thomas (1897) also
considered that the poor populations shewed a
larger proportion of male births than the wealthy.
Raseri proved that in years of famine and of war,
more boys than girls were born.

Worms' statistics are, nevertheless, the most
complete, and justify the construction of the
nutrition theory on solid grounds. How are
these facts to be explained which seem to be
opposed to the ordinary belief that the man has,
as a rule, greater strength than the woman ?
If the woman, says Worms, is born with more
abundant alimentary reserves, that would facili-

1 A. Niceforo, Les Classes pauvres. Recherches unfhro-
•bologiques ci sociales. Vol. dc 244 p. Paris 1905 Giarcl and
13ri6re.

io6 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

tate her existence, but it would restrain her from
an activity which might increase her powers
and her social productiveness. Selection is
more severe for man and, at the same time, more
useful to him.

De Greef (Brussels), struck by these results,
has gone as far as to say, that the sex which is
pretended to be the weaker, is really the stronger,
it has the greater powers of resistance to the
forces which destroy life ; it is also the more
difficult to produce ; it requires the most
advantageous conditions. Zoologists consider
that the female is the strong sex, and that the male
is the beautiful one.

Let us examine this opinion and put ourselves
the question of finding out if the female sex can
really be called " strong."

The answer must be supplied by physiology,
and not by sociology, or even zoology. A
greater " vitality " is not the equivalent of
strength. And besides, the word " vitality " is
not well chosen ; we are dealing with longevity,
with " viability," as it were. Strength and
longevity might even be opposed to one another:
Let us consult anthropometric results.

The figures given below represent the female
quantities expressed in masculine hundredths.

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 107

Height and weight of the body 88-5 to 94

(from 100).

Weight of the brain, 90 (Broca is different).
Weight of skeleton (femur), 62-5.
CO. 2 exhaled in 24 hours 64-5 (day labourer),

(Andral and Gavarret 1843).
Vital Capacity (18 years), 72-6 (Pagliani, 1876). x
Force of pressure on dynamometer (hands)

57-1 (labourer, loteyko).

Force of traction on dynamometer (bringing
the muscles of the back in play) 52-6
(Ouetelet, 1869).
Test of power of resistance to fatigue (ergograph)

63 (Schouteden).

This table shews that, in a general way, the
woman is to the man, from the physical point of
view, as 80 to 100, which is what Manouarier also
affirms, but the co-efficients are very unequal
according to the information given. The result
is the lowest where it relates to momentary effort
measured by the dynamometer (57% and even
52%) : the strength of the man is almost double
that of the woman. This last test is charac-
teristic of strength ; it necessitates a sharp,
sudden effort, an energetic and rapid discharge of
nervous energy. This is an attribute of the
masculine sex.

1 By Testing respiratory organs by the spirometer.

loS THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

The facts will appear still more significant when
we examine the development of dynamometric
force in connection with the age of children.
Girls are weaker than boys at all ages, but the
difference is slight up to the age of n years, and
it increases steadily after that age. The difference
in the curves for boys and girls, become more and
more accentuated as they approach the age of
puberty. Furthermore, the girls' strength ceases
to increase to any extent in certain curves, after
the age of 14 years.

And if we compare the development of
muscular strength with those of other anthropo-
metric aptitudes, we discover other differences
that are no less characteristic. The difference in
weight and in stature between the adult man
and woman, is about 10% in favour of the man.
But at one given point of growth (towards the
period of puberty), girls are superior to boys in
this respect. This superiority lasts three years
for the stature, and seven years for weight.
Now, preponderating strength is never for a
moment in their lives, shewn by girls ; Con-
sequently, even when the weight and height of girls
is greater than that of boys, their muscular strength
does not, in consequence, suffer any increase.
Muscular strength is, therefore, in certain respects
independent of general growth. It is in the

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 109

highest degree a characteristic of sex. It is at
the period of puberty that the difference in
muscular strength is accentuated and definitely
established.

Anthropologists, when studying the difference
between the sexes must, therefore, not forget this
striking fact : in the law of physiological differ-
ences, muscular force (momentary effort), con-
stitutes a specific characteristic of the masculine
sex. To this, one might add the difference in the
elevation of the voice. Men of small stature are
muscularly stronger than even tall women,
and they have deeper voices. The difference in
strength is partly because men have larger masses
of muscles, and partly to peculiar qualities of their
motor system.

But the woman has, comparatively, more power
of resistance. In certain cases this greater power
of endurance is absolute, as in resistance to
sickness, in her longevity, in the determining
cause of sex. In other cases, it is relative, as in
the ergographic test. The co-efficient is, in this
case, equal to 63%, whereas in the dynamometer

it is 57%.

Now, the metabolic (changing) conditions
(of nutrition), are quite different in the case
of strength, and in the case of " endurance."
The exhibition of strength demands a sharp,

no THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

violent expenditure of energy, and is followed
consecutively by exhaustion, during which
strength is renewed and nutrition obtained.
Thus the action is intermittent, only a limited
quantity of nutritious matter being parted with
on condition that it is rapidly replaced. These
two conditions, the power of acting instan-
taneously under a stimulating impulse, and the
ability to rapidly replace the losses suffered,
are the characteristics of strength.

It is quite different with the power of endurance.
That requires a slow and gradual expenditure of
energy, accompanied by little fatigue, or even
immunity from it. Neither must we lose sight of
the fact, that resistance may also be purely
passive, even in muscular work (inertia of the
bones and articulations). The work of endurance
is incontestably more economical, more produc-
tive, and less exhausting than the expenditure of
spontaneous force. Each of these forms of energy
has its uses, and its necessities, each represents a
distinct function.

It follows that we may again accept an old
physiological idea which pretended that man is
above all a " katabolic " being (breaking down),
that woman is an " anabolic " being (building up).
This anabolism, peculiar to woman, is surely
directly connected with the maternal functions

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK in

allotted to her. In creating lives, woman does not
transform energy, she bestows it in its nutritive
and chemical form.

Man personifies strength, the woman is the
expression of endurance. This resisting power in
woman should dispel many accepted prejudices,
which have represented her as " eternally woun-
ded," and needing care every hour of her life.
Now, except under certain conditions, it is only
in pathological cases that this is true. Under the
usual physiological conditions, woman is vigorous,
full of resistance, and robust ; and during this
European war, has not the work done by women
in every sphere of life (including work in munition
factories), and in every belligerent country,
given one more proof of the enormous amount of
energy and power of endurance of which that sex
is capable, which has been called " weak " by
superficial observers, who are now recognised as
having been mistaken.

The physical inferiority of women from the
point of view of " strength," properly so called,
which is proved by her having a much less well
developed muscular system than that of man,
is, we believe, congenital, nevertheless that
inferiority has been considerably increased by
want of exercise, in following the law of least
resistance. The original cause (of a biological

H2 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

kind), has created a certain predisposition, a
dislike common to most young girls, with regard
to physical exercises. This repugnance should
be overcome, because, on account of the law of
the least resistance having come into play, it has
passed physiological limits. It might become
morbid if a suitable physical education did not
correct this predisposition to a sedentary life, and
thus lead to all those evil results to health
that might follow in its wake.

2. — A NEW THEORY OF RIGHT-HANDEDNESS.
THE PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL THEORY.

We cannot, within the compass of this book,
deal with all the different theories that have
been advanced in explanation of the origin of
right and left-handedness.1 One thing seems
certain, and that is, that asymmetry is con-
genital, but that it has been considerably increased
by the almost exclusive use of the right hand.

Amongst recent theories may be mentioned
that which has been put forward by Herber.2

1 See : J. loteyko, Theorie psycho-physiologique de la
droiterie. Revue philosophique, June and July, 1916.

2 J. Herber ; Essai d'une theorie cliniqne de la droiterie.
Memorandum laid before the Academie de Medecine 12 Nov.
1912.

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 113

This doctor, convinced that the only cause of
right-handedness was a clinical one, asserted,
as the result of prolonged and extensive obser-
vations, that the sufferings, movements, and efforts
of the left side of the body react so powerfully
on the heart that it is only natural, in following
the law of least resistance, that man should have
almost exclusively developed the use of his
right hand.

The agonising attacks in the chest (angina
pectoris) during which the pain in the heart so
constantly reaches to the left arm, might lead to
the belief that there are connections between
the two organs undiscovered by dissection.
Other observations have established the effect
of lesions of the left arm on the heart. Potain
and his pupil Lasegue, have described a series of
experiments in which lesions of the left arm
caused palpitations, or anginal troubles or
hypertrophy of the heart.

Neuralgia in the veins of the left arm, or the
amputation of the left arm, may bring cardiac
maladies in their train. According to Oilier,
Huchard, and other clinical surgeons, experi-
ments clearly shew that the lesions of the whole
of the left side of the body may react on the
heart. Amongst invalids, rather violent move-
ments of the left arm cause cardiac attacks.

H

U4 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

There are probably anatomical connections
which, unknown as yet, will explain these clinical
symptoms, and shew the action of the heart upon
the whole of the left side of the body.

This hypothesis, as to the origin of right-
handedness, published by Dr. Herber in 1912,
had been recognised by us as early as 1907, and,
so as to test it, we started some experiments
which we did not make known until 1916. Our
point of departure was the following. Right-
handedness is certainly not acquired by indivi-
duals, it is a phenomenon common to man, and
has existed from all time, though in a less degree.
Hence, there must be some important cause to
account for its origin. The various theories and
hypotheses advanced by different writers are not
satisfying, even though they very likely
contain some part of the truth. Now, when
speaking of right-handedness, or left-handedness,
it is first of all necessary to keep " strength "
in view, as a distinctive characteristic ; skill
is a differentiation of evolution, whilst strength
is primitive.

Now, amongst the effects of muscular labour,
that which it exercises on the heart, is certainly
the most important to the organism as a whole.
The heart-beats are quickened, and that to a very
considerable extent. The over-strain of the heart

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 115

is often brought about by too much physical
work.1

In physical exercises, the first thing that it is
necessary to avoid is over-taxing the heart. And,
moreover, death from fatigue, which does occa-
sionally occur, in very exceptional cases (the
classical example is that of the runner of Mara-
thon), is due to the stopping of the heart. That
organ first of all precipitates its beats and ends
by becoming exhausted.

Heart, fatigue is, therefore, the rock to be
avoided when taking muscular exercise in the
widest sense, and an excess of exercise is exacted,
when a man no longer has only his own weight to
bear, but also performs supplementary mechanical
work in displacing heavy weights.

It would seem natural therefore, to admit
a priori, that some mechanical automatic
regulator must exist in man, some protective
mechanism to act in conjunction with the heart,
whereby the consequences of too great a strain
are avoided. And we have thought that this
protective element might very likely be found
in right-handedness, by inciting man to by pre-
ference use, in the performance of heavy work,
either the right hand only, or both hands together,

1 See our article Fatigue in Ch. Richel's Dictionnaire de
Physiologie, Alcan.

n6 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

but always saving the left hand from working
by itself, which, by its situation in the neighbour-
hood of the heart, seems likely to be in closer
touch with that organ than the right hand.

We have submitted our theory to experiment.
We advance it, not as a clinical theory, but as
a psycho-physiological theory of right-handedness,
seeing that we attribute to it a biological and
psychical significance.

These experiments were begun in 1907, in
collaboration with Mile V. Kipiani, and were
continued during several winters, in the psycho-
physiological laboratory of the Brussels University,
on some of the students .there — male and female.
Herber quotes a certain number of pathological
cases which support our opinion and which
completes it on the clinical side. But his
opinion, in spite of that, remains purely theoretical.
That is why we think it may be well to make our
experiments known, as they furnish an experi-
mental contribution to the problem. We will
now describe our experiments. We admit then,
theoretically, that the same muscular work
achieved by the left hand should be more harmful
to the heart than that identical work when done
by the right hand. As a criterion of cardiac
fatigue one may examine the acceleration of
cardiac beats, resulting from the work of each hand.

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 117

The experiments were made on 32 people,
students of our course of psychology in the
psycho-physiological laboratory in the Brussels
University (22 male students, 10 female), of about
20 years of age. The work required of each arm
was the following : the fore-arm being bent on
the arm, a weight of 2 kg. and a half was given
the student to hold in his hand. And, following
the rhythm of a metronome, the student (standing
in upright position), had to raise this weight above
his head until the upper arm was extended to the
full, every two seconds. The men were required
to raise the arm 30 times, the women 20.

The general trend of the experiment was this.
The students were assembled in a neighbouring
room and each one came into the laboratory alone.
Once there, they were required to keep absolutely
quiet for several minutes. One knows, as a
matter of fact, that it is enough to take just a few
steps for the pulse to become distinctly quicker.
After this rest, the rapidity of the radial pulse
per minute was taken (by means of simple
palpation) and the number of pulsations was
written down as the normal state. After which,
the student executed the movements described,
with one hand. The number of pulsations was
then immediately noted. The student then left
the laboratory and waited in the adjoining room,

n8 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

leaving the field clear for other experiments. He
returned at the end of at least half an hour and
the same experiment was then made upon him
on the opposite side. In the third place the effect
on the heart of performing the work with both
hands simultaneously was studied, each hand
holding 2\ kilograms.

In other experiments the dynamometric strength
of all the students was measured so as to separate
the right from the left-handed, or, more accurately,
to discover which were stronger on one side than
on the other. All these experiments were made
on different occasions upon each person, and in
spite of a co-efficient error, inevitable in experi-
ments of this kind, they gave very clear results.
The task required was a very tiring one, (judging
from those on whom it was tried, and also by
noticing their attitudes), the respiration was
halting, and the complexion flushed.

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 119

GENERAL TABLE.

Acceleration of the radial pulse under the influence
of Muscular Exertion.

(32 subjects).

GROUPS

Work with the
right arm
quickens pulse
per minute.

Work with
left arm
quickens pulse
per minute.

Simultaneous
work with
both arms
quickens pulse
per minute.

Pulsations

Pulsations

Pulsations

Left-handed men

5-i

6-5

107

Right-handed men

6-4

7-1

7-2

Left-handed women

4-0

9-2

9-0

Right-handed women

4-0

7-2

9-0

Averages

4-87

7'5

8-97

We will first consider the general conclusions
to be drawn from this table and we will next
examine the differences, by groups.

The general averages (taken by including the
men and women together — the right and the left-
handed) shew that exhausting work when accom-
plished by the left hand, produces a more intense
(more injurious] effect on the heart, than the same
work when performed by the right hand ; the

120 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

difference is equal to about one third. In causing
both hands to work together and consequently by
causing a double effort in the same space of time,
the cardiac acceleration is not the total of the two
accelerations together but it is less by one quarter.

In passing on to the groups we obtain more
precise results.

Amongst right-handed men, the effect on the
heart is almost identical in the case of work with
either hand, as well as when both hands work
together. The advantage of bi-manual work
is clearly shewn.

Amongst right-handed women, the results
differ, in that the work done by the left hand
exhausts the heart almost twice as much as the
work done by the right hand. Bi-manual work
is an advantage, but less than is the case with
a right-handed man. The advantage amounts
to one fifth.

Amongst left-handed men, work done by the
left hand is more tiring to the heart than work
done by the right hand. The difference equals
one fifth. The simultaneous work of both
hands tires the heart rather less than the total
of work performed by each hand separately.
The difference equals one tenth.

Amongst left-handed women, the work done by
the left hand tires the heart almost two and

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 121

one half times as much as the same work done
by the right hand. The simultaneous work
of both hands tires the heart to the same extent
as that done by the left hand.

We can now interpret these results and draw
some conclusions from them.

The fatigue of the heart, which appears to be
much greater among women, who work with their
left hands, than amongst men, may be attributed
to two causes. The test was certainly more
exhausting for them than for the men. They,
in fact, frequently complained of it. In the
second place, we attribute to the woman greater
cardiac excitability than to men. When ques-
tioned on this point, several of our female students
stated that they not infrequently experienced
palpitations.

Amongst the left-handed, men as well as women,
the work done with the left hand is more injurious
to the heart than that done by the right hand,
but the difference is less marked in the case of the
man (left-handed), it is very marked in the case
of the woman (left-handed).

One can therefore, say, that two essential conditions
make work with the left hand particularly injurious
to the heart : on the one hand, left-handedness
(predominance of strength on the left side), and,
on the other, the feminine sex.

122 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

As regards the simultaneous work of both hands,
this presents considerable advantages, for right-
handed and for left-handed people as well, both for
men as for women.

We see the idea which served as our point of
departure clearly confirmed — we know that work
performed with the left hand must produce a
more injurious effect on the heart than the same
work performed with the right hand.

And it is with a certain degree of probability
that we recognise that the original cause of
right-handedness is due to defensive mechanism,
intended to protect the heart against the effects of
the great strain caused by the excessive use of
the left hand. The results of these experiments
shew also a very remarkable gradation which
cannot be due to chance.

It is clear that the degree of harmfulness due to
working with the left hand is not the same under
all circumstances. Various pedagogic and in-
dustrial conclusions flow from this. Observe
that the work exacted was of a kind to require,
from the subjects of it, as great an aptitude from
the point of view of strength as from the point
of view of powers of endurance. In this the
woman is clearly shewn to be the inferior. From
this it follows that the danger to be avoided for
them in the exercises used in physical education,

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 123

as well as in industrial work, is the performance
of work which puts too great a strain on the heart.
Careful supervision should be exercised in this
respect, even in normal cases.

In cases of cardiac disease, the woman should
be dismissed from certain kinds of hard work.
But do not let us forget that work with the right
hand or bi-manual work may often be allowed.

As regards the greater fatigue shewn by the
left-handed, working with the left hand, to the
right-handed, working under the like conditions,
the explanation is still surrounded with great
obscurity. But it seems very probable that
the left-handed person, who is strongest on the
left side, is naturally inclined to develop a larger
total of work on that side. The result of this is,
a warning to left-handed people (those who in
preference if not exclusively use their left hand),
to avoid certain heavy employments, such as
unloading of goods, removing of furniture, etc.,
at least unless they have, through suitable
training, become ambidextrous.

The clear result of these experiments is, that
it is more dangerous for a person to be very
markedly left-handed than right-handed. Left-
handedness appears, to the present writer, to
be a defective adaptation, it is necessary to
correct it. The left hand, therefore, in the case

124 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

of a left-handed person, should not be developed
from the point of view of strength, because then
it will be used to excess, and will produce great
fatigue of the heart. In developing their right
hand, and placing it, as far as possible, on an
equality with the left, ambidextrous conditions of
work will be created, and those are the most
advantageous of all. In no cases, however, will it
be possible to change the left-handed into right-
handed people, seeing that, with them, the right
hand hemisphere is more developed, and con-
genitaly more perfect than the left hand hemis-
phere. The left-handed persons will thus remain
left-handed for the more complicated kinds of
work, works of skill, such as do not require great
muscular effort.

In conclusion then, it is the over-work of the
left hand that should be avoided, and that more
in the case of the left than the right handed,
more in the case of women than of men, more in
the case of people with excitable hearts, and
above all, in the case of those suffering from
heart disease.1 Amongst right-handed men, the
harmlessness of working with the left hand only
is only apparent ; as a matter of fact we have

1 If the left-handed people were completely inverted, that is
to say, if their hearts were on the right sid'e of their bodies,
it would be working with their right hands that would be
harmful to th^m. But the inversion of the viscera is ex-
tremely rare.

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 125

only had to do with remarkably robust individuals;
injurious effects might have made themselves
felt after more arduous work.

The teacher, even whilst respecting natural
tendencies, should institute exercises amongst
his right-handed pupils too, especially amongst
those markedly right-handed, for the correction
of what is excessive, and to allow of the child's
making use of both hands.

Why not praise bi-manual education (a term
which we prefer to ambidexterity), when we see
its excellent results in those experiments where
the work was accomplished by both hands
simultaneously ? The result does not seem
insignificant when we compare the figures given
by Orchanski, who says that, at the present time,
25% of the trades require the simultaneous
development of both hands. This necessity for
the use of both hands, we may add, is very clearly
apparent in the occupation of a soldier ; we may
be allowed to say that an ambidextrous education,
if begun in childhood, should certainly have most
unexpected results in that relation.

Our theories of right-handedness go beyond the
limits of pure physiology ; we have, moreover,
called them psycho -physiological. It is, as
a matter of fact, very probable, that the
right hand has developed greater strength on

126 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

account of the reasons given. It is a superiority
acquired during man's phylogenetic develop-
ment. This supremacy carries others in its train.
The work of the right hand has reacted on the
left hemisphere, and has produced its supremacy,
and that not only from the psycho-motor stand-
point, but also from the point of view of sensi-
tiveness, skill, and intelligence, because of the
connections existing between the different centres.
The difference between the two hemispheres,
at first physiological, has, in the course of time,
become psychological.

In fact, it has been proved that asymmetry not
only bears on the centres of perception, it also
affects the centres of speech, of recognition (the
loss of which produces amnesia, or the impossi-
bility of recognising objects or signs), and the
powers of co-ordination (the loss of which con-
stitutes ataxia or the impossibility of executing
the proper movements for arriving at a given
place. We will not penetrate into the region
of the centres of association. Now, these centres,
among right-handed people, are localized on
the left side.

We believe that it is due to the operation of
the law of least resistance, that the left hand has
been condemned to inaction, and the right hand
has acquired an exaggerated development. This

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 127

one-sided localization of a great many of the
centres of perception, and of the centres of asso-
ciation, seems to us to be acquired and is cer-
tainly not free from danger to the healthy
integrity of cerebral action. It has passed its
functional destiny by a long way.

3. — AMBIDEXTROUS EDUCATION.

The practical conclusion come to in the prece-
ding chapter is as follows : Ambidextrous educa-
tion has for its aim, the correction of the excessive
supremacy of one hand over the other, a supremacy
which far surpasses original asymmetry, because
of the almost exclusive use of that side of the
body that is best endowed, and by virtue of the
law of least resistance.

This necessity for correction being admitted,
the degree should be decided on. Now, the
law of least resistance has been so effective,
that the training for the work of all the industries
of civilisation is based on the activities of one
hand only, and one cerebral hemisphere only.
The increased growth of asymmetry is proved by
means of the dynamometer (p. 97).

We have elsewhere refuted Felix Regnault's l

1 F. Regnault, Pourqiici en est drottier ? Revue scientifique
13 June, 1914.

128 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

objections, for he considers asymmetry to be a
sign of superiority because it is almost unknown
amongst animals, very slightly developed amongst
savages and very marked in civilized man, less
marked amongst women than amongst men,
amongst children than amongst adults. This
is to believe that our civilization has brought
us nothing but progress. Alas ! this is the
reverse of the truth ! Nothing illustrates this
better than the tables relating to myopia, which
show that this affection, almost non-existent
amongst the peasantry and the uncultured,
increases strangely in proportion to the degree of
education, up to the point of being most accen-
tuated amongst university men. Yet no one
would consider myopia as a sign of superiority.
It is an annoying consequence — but avoidable —
of a certain state of things. It is the same with
asymmetry. That a pathological foundation
would sometimes seem necessary for the bursting
forth of genius we will not deny, and a strong
portion of asymmetry may perhaps, in that re-
spect, be an advantage. But we have never seen
pedagogy strive for deformity in order to attain to
an object as obscure as it is uncertain. One cannot
consent to the extinction of the most feeble organ.
We commend ambidextrous exercises quite as
much because they are healthy for the practical

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 129

centres as because of their practical utility. We
mean, not only gymnastic exercises, but also
games, manual work, drawing and writing.

In England, it was John Jackson, founder of
the London Society for Ambidextrous Education,
who became the promoter of bi-manual educa-
tion. The results were excellent. In Germany,
we have the name of Pabst (Leipzig) ; in Belgium,
Sleeys and Tensi, Mme Michiels, ourselves, and
our pupil, Mile V. Kipiani. In the United States
bi-manual education is current in the schools.

The wisdom of carrying this bi-manual educa-
tion as far as the training of the left hand to
write, has been proved by Fraenkel's clinical
observations. This doctor has reported cases of
invalids whose right hand being paralysed, also
suffered from aphasia. Upon their learning
to write with their left hand, they began to
develop the right centre of language and thus
regained the power of speech. This shews the
close connection between speech and writing, and
the enormous part played by writing in the
development of cerebral functions. The energy
gained by bi-manual education is valued by
Fraenkel at 50%. The students, the labourers,
artisans, soldiers, are all visibly benefited.
Writer's cramp will no longer exist, since the hand
will no longer suffer from over- work.

I

130 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

These facts shew the wisdom of training the
left hand to write and to draw. The use of
speech is one of the most intellectual powers of
man, and drawing is also connected with one of
our highest functions (art),

The hand, which is the servant of the brain
and one of the chief instruments for the execution
of the wishes of that organ, should be developed
bi-laterally. It will thus become possible to
develop those treasures of the mind which have
lain hidden in the dormant cerebral hemisphere
condemned to certain death for the want of
cultivation. According to Orchanski, the har-
monious development of both sides of the body
may exercise a very considerable influence upon
general development, and amongst backward
children who shew difficulties of speech, it may
help the acquirement of language. Certain
statements seem to contradict this opinion.
Thus, Ballard has pointed out the frequency
of stammering amongst left-handed abnormal
children, who are taught to write with their
right hand. But we must not forget that in
the left hemisphere, in the case of left-handed
people, neither Broca nor Wernicke's centre is
developed, both being developed in the right-hand
hemisphere. It is clear that, if writing can be
accomplished by one hand, it will be done by the

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 131

better hand, which, in the case of a left-handed
person, would be the left hand. By quite
reprehensible inconsequence, people try to
transform the left into a right-handed person,
and only train one side (the right hand one),
whose action on the centres they wish to develop
is nil at the commencement of the effort.

Under these conditions, according to Stier's
opinion, trouble may arise, owing to a struggle
for supremacy between the two hemispheres.

4. — ALIMENTATION AND WORK.

In the course of studying the different con-
ditions of labour,1 we have, in collaboration
with Mile V. Kipiani,2 examined 43 Brussels
vegetarians, all healthy, who had not adopted
this unusual regimen for therapeutic reasons,
but for moral or hygienic reasons. All were total
abstainers, and only used coffee, tea and choco-
late very sparingly. These people belonged to
the intellectual class of workers. We examined
their dynamometric strength, their powers of
resistance to fatigue were tested by the ergograph,
their vital capacity by means of the spirometer,

1 J. loteyko, Les lois de i'ergographie, Bui, de 1'Acad. Roy.
de Belgique, classe des Sciences, 1904, extract of 174 p.

* J. loteyko and V. Kipiani, Enquete scientifique sur Ics
vegetariens de Bruxelles. Pamphlet of 77 p. Brussels, 1907.

132 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

and the rapidity of their nervous reaction by
means of d'Arsonval's chronometer. The com-
parison of the mechanical work accomplished
by the vegetarians, and that accomplished by
the omnivorous, is very significant. We see
how enormously the vegetarians are benefited.
The omnivorous people, however, with whom
they were compared, were rather powerful
University students, whilst the vegetarians were
in no case of herculean appearance. In the
average, one might estimate the increase of
mechanical work, due to a vegetarian diet, at
50%, if we omit one single ergogram, which was
carried to the limit of fatigue.

The form of the curves gave results no less
interesting. This increase in the mechanical
labour of the vegetarians was not made at the
expense of the heights of isolated contractions ;
on the contrary, the contractions in their cases
were a little shorter than those of the omnivorous
It is their number which is considerably increased.
Their number is often doubled, nay, even tripled,
amongst the vegetarians, when compared to
the omnivorous. Vegetarians can work for two
or three times as long as the omnivorous can, without
becoming exhausted. This effort is distributed
with greater regularity, amongst vegetarians ;
their curve keeps at one level for a long time

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 133

and is very slow in its descent. The curve of the
non-vegetarians is higher at the beginning, but
the descent is rapid. It gives the impression of
there being, amongst the latter, a dissipation
of their strength at the beginning of their work,
and that their effort cannot be long sustained.

From the point of view of productivity, it is
much more profitable to extend labour over a
long period, even though it be a little less energetic,
than to expend a greater amount of energy in a
short period only.

A third point shews the incontestable superiority
of vegetarians. The recovery from fatigue is
much more rapid amongst them than amongst
the omnivorous : two minutes rest between the
curves, suffice for the recovery of the whole of their
powers amongst vegetarians. Under the conditions
of the ordinary regimen, ten minutes, at least,
are required.

As regards the calculation of strength by the
dynamometer, the averages furnished by the
vegetarians are almost identically the same as
those supplied by the omnivorous. No loss of
strength can be proved here. For the purpose of
comparison we will use the experiments already
quoted for both the dynamometer and the ergo-
graph.1 The vital capacity was measured by

1 See the experiments by Schoutenden and by myself.

134 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

means of Verdin's spirometer. The vegetarians
shewed a vital capacity superior to that of the
non- vegetarians (volume of air expired after forced
inspiration).

The time taken for nervous reaction (in acoustic
excitation), is no longer among vegetarians than
among non-vegetarians. This is of great im-
portance from the standpoint of industrial acci-
dents (see p. 39).

We are, therefore, justified in saying that a
vegetarian working man would not be more
subject to industrial accidents than an omnivorous
workman. But, as vegetarians tire themselves
less than the non- vegetarians, they are really
less liable to those accidents incidental to their
work.

Such are the principal conclusions which
result from this impartial enquiry, of which the
sole purpose was, to gather scientific information
bearing on powers of work under various experi-
mental conditions. They are entirely in favour
of a vegetarian diet. The progress of alimentary
chemistry, and of physiology, has super-abundantly
shewn that an entirely vegetable diet is compatible
with the preservation of health and strength.
On the other hand, they have disclosed the dangers
of a carnivorous diet, the producer of auto-
toxines. Auto-toxines are the sources of various

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 135

maladies (belonging to the cycle of arthritism)
and they exercise a paralysing action on the
muscles. On the other hand, we know that in
order to keep the human body in good condition,
some albuminoids are required and in order to pro-
duce energy, a good supply of carbohydrates is
necessary. These latter are found more abun-
dantly in the vegetable than in the animal
kingdom. Bouchard has rightly said : that a
meat diet is not conducive to the performance of
muscular work. Neither is there anything to
shew the necessity or the utility of a meat diet,
for brain work. Only, the transition from a
meat to a vegetable diet is painful in some cases,
and strong and tenacious prejudices are opposed
to the general adoption of a vegetarian diet.

We may conclude that, in tests of their powers of
resistance to fatigue, vegetarians are proved to be
superior to non-vegetarians, whilst in tests of
strength and in tests of speed they are equal to
them.

These proofs have an economic and a social
bearing. Hygienists and sociologists should not
turn the working man away from a vegetarian
diet, which is the most economical, and at the
same time the most productive from the
stand-point of work, and may also be looked
upon as one of the best means of combating

136 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

alcoholism.1 Unhappily, the idea still gener-
ally obtaining to-day, is, that meat alone is
strengthening.

We had the honour of seeing our book on
the study of vegetarians, approved by the
Academy of Medicine. Now, to-day, when the
necessities of war have made it absolutely necessary
to lessen the consumption of meat, we have heard
Dr. Maurel, at the same learned assembly, make
a speech (in January, 1917), shewing that France
requires from 900 millions to a billion kilograms
of proteids per annum, to feed her, that is a daily
consumption of from 75-90 grammes of albumen
per adult inhabitant. Now, this amount, said
Dr. Maurel, is largely provided for her by the
vegetables she grows — notably by cereals, dry
vegetables, potatoes, etc. Furthermore, milk
adds about 240 million kilograms of nitrogen
to this. As to the meat consumed, even in the
towns which use the most, they scarcely supply
from 25-30 grammes of nitrogen per adult —
that is — a third of the necessary quantity.
Moreover, the proteids of either fresh or frozen
meat are three or four times as expensive as
those provided by vegetables, and, after a certain

1 Vegetarians are quite naturally abstainers, because they
are not thirsty. Vegetable foods contain the necessary amount
of water, and neither do they awaken thirst artificially, which
is the case with meat.

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 137

limit is passed, constitute less healthy food than
the latter. For these various reasons, there is no
cause for alarm, concluded Dr. Maurel, if our
supply of meat leaves something to be desired,
since our vegetables can supply us more cheaply,
and in a more healthy form, with the full quantity
of proteids of which we are in need.

And when France decided, at the end of the
third year of the war, to prohibit the use of meat
for two days a week, she, at the same time minis-
tered to an economic necessity and a hygienic
need.1

5. — USE OF THE LEFT HAND BY THE WOUNDED
AND MUTILATED.

(Some Scientific Rules for Re-education).

The problem of re-educating those wounded
in the war,2 revives certain anthropological
and physiological neuro-muscular questions,
which are receiving a new kind of application in
connection with a new and interesting class of
people, and the necessity suddenly arises for

1 See : J. loteyko and V. Kipiani, Lc Vegetarisme et son
influence si.r la sante publique, U Commerce, V Industrie et
I'Economie de la nature. Report of the International Food
Congress, Ghent, 1908. Pamphlet of 68 p.

2 f . loteyko L' usage de la main gauche chez les mutiles.
Quelqucs regies scientifqucs de reeducation. Revue Scientifique,
No. 16, 2nd scm. 1916.

138 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

establishing this re-education on solid scientific
foundations, with the object of restoring to our
wounded, — if not the normal use of their injured
limbs, — at least a shadow of that use, and above
all of permitting the substitution of one limb for
another, and the apprenticeship to a new trade.
This idea of re-education is not entirely new ; for
a long time now, those crippled by accidents
in the course of their work, have been cared for.
and re-educated in Schools ad hoc, with a
view to restoring them to society, and preserving
them from beggary, the thousands who, — victims
of our economic system and its dangers, — each
year pay their contribution to an industrialisa-
tion pushed to an extreme.

But that which is very exceptional, even
in the most, industrial countries, has become
very common during the war ; those who escape
death return crippled, lame, deaf, paralysed.
And one sympathises with all the attempts made
to build up these maimed, imperfect, amputated
bodies, so as to make them capable of again
taking their place amongst the active in this
world, — amongst the workers able to gain their
daily bread.

Those mutilated in the war must be numbered
by the thousand, if we are to take all the belli-
gerents into account.

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 139

How many there are who have lost an arm !
the loss of one of the upper limbs is very
unequal in its effects on the sufferer, according
to whether it is the right or the left arm that is
lost. As most people are right-handed, the loss
of the right arm is much the more serious, and the
re-education of those crippled in battle is com-
plicated by necessitating the education of the left
arm, which has remained, so to speak, inactive
up to now. And it is with this education of the
left arm that we are going to deal in this section,
in the hope that these pages may be of some use
to those who have the task — the heavy and grave
responsibility of re-making, of restoring those
mutilated in the war, of just those who, having
to live by manual work, find themselves suddenly
deprived of their productive organ, their one
and only possession, — of one arm, if not of both !
Dr. Fraenkel, already quoted above, has reported
cases of wounded, paralysed in the right hand,
who, at the same time suffer from aphasia.
In teaching them to write with their left hand,
they also develop the right centre of language.
The paralytic thus recovers the power of speech.
One single experience of this kind is of greater
interest than the whole of a vain argument.
It demonstrates the direct connection between
speech and writing, and the enormous importance

140 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

of writing in cerebral functions. These facts
clearly explain the theory of aphasia, formulated
by Broca and which led to the discovery of
the centres of articulate language. Now, the
centre of speech is located in a convolution
situated in the posterior part of the lower frontal
convolution in the neighbourhood of the centre of
writing. The exercise of the left hand cannot,
therefore, be confined to gymnastic movements
only, but, just as speech is one of the msot
intellectual functions of man, so also is writing
and drawing, because the latter, although manual
acts, nevertheless touch one of our highest
functions (ethics and art).

From these premises we draw the following
practical conclusions ; it is indispensable, in the
treatment of those suffering from aphasia, due to
the loss of an arm in the war to make them learn to
write and to draw with the left hand, so as to develop
a new centre of speech which will be situated in the
right cerebral hemisphere.

We have many times boasted of other advan-
tages attaching to ambidexterity, — the cure of
writer's cramp which is common amongst those
employed in clerical work, the better utilization
of strength in the various manual employments,
and, finally, the immense advantage it gives those
who, in cases of paralysis or amputation, are in a

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 141

position to use the arm that remains intact.
Certain it is, that late training can never attain
an equal proficiency to that acquired at an early
age. If ambidexterity had been a common
practice, those now mutilated in the war would
be much more capable of acquiring the required
skill with the left arm, having been originally
trained by games, gymnastics, drawing, writing,
manual work, and even by certain arts and handi-
crafts.

The training of the left hand amongst those
maimed in the war, has now become an inevitable
necessity and we can only rejoice to see that
previous experiments in ambidexterity are so
much in favour of such training. It goes without
saying, that the left-handed man who is maimed,
must, in like manner develop the right arm, but
it remains to be shewn under what conditions
such training should be carried out. This is
what we will now enquire into.

To begin with, one remark must be made.
We cannot here speak of " Ambidextrous," or
" bi-manual " education, as we generally do.
Those on whom the experiments are to be made,
have had one arm amputated, and it is a ques-
tion of how to give the remaining arm the strength
and skill necessary to the acquirement of some
handicraft.

142 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

This training of the left hand should be directed
by several principles. It is highly advantageous to
enable the man to keep to his original occupation,
— that is to say — to teach the left hand to execute
the same movements as those which had been
executed by the right hand. This principle has
been very clearly established in the attempts
to re-educate the maimed, as it has been recognised
in practice, that the experience gained by one
hand is an advantage to the other.

How is this remarkable fact to be explained ?
It has been experimentally demonstrated,
notably in some of our researches,1 that the work
performed by one arm reacts on the other, either
by increasing its excitability, or by diminishing it,
as the case may be.

This evidence proves that the state in which
the psycho-motor centres of one side exist,
is more or less reproduced on the opposide side.
Other observations demonstrate that the same is
the case with acquired movements. If you ask
a person to write with the left hand, you will
notice that after several futile attempts, he will
succeed, without much trouble, in tracing pre-
sentable letters. And, the curious thing is,
that the writing of the left hand will bear the

1 /. loteyho, L'eftort nerveux et la fatigue. Archives de
Biologic XVI, 1899.

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 143

impress of all the peculiarities of the writing by
the right hand, — it will reflect the personal
characteristic element which enables us to
recognise each person by his hand- writing.1
These statements which were handed to us to
verify, after the experiments made by Mile V.
Kipiani,2 a pupil in our laboratory, shew several
points which are of real value, — in the first place,
that the movements acquired by the left hemis-
phere (which directs the movements of the right
hand), are transmitted to the right hemisphere,
and, secondly, that this transmission is not
purely and simply an increase of excitability, but
that it comprises all the complicated movements
necessitated by the act of writing, in a word,
that the characteristics of handwriting certainly
have their origin in some central cerebral cause.
According to Dr. Meige, the graphic education
of the right hand is reflected as in a mirror on
the upper left limb, and, in a general way, the
training of the motor centres of one limb has its
corresponding effect on the symmetrical motcr
centres of the opposite limb. The effect of this
training, though often latent, is none the less real
and shews itself, when called upon, in the facility
with which the untrained limb will reproduce the
movements of the trained limb.

1 This is most of all apparent it the writing is viewed in mirror.

2 See : V. Kipian:, Ambidexirie, 103 p. F. Alcan, 1912.

144 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

These rules have already been applied in the
treatment of convulsions and cramp (Meige) ;
they are going to help us to establish the basis
for the re-education of the maimed.

Consequent upon the opposing symmetry of
the two halves of the brain " mirror writing "
is looked upon as the normal physiological writing
of the left hand. " Reflected Movements "
is the name given to those executed by the left
hand in contradistinction to those executed by
the right hand. These movements are those
which come the most natural to it, — the easiest
of execution. From the moment when the right
hand has adopted a system of working which
seems to it the easiest, the left hand ought to make
the same gestures whilst maintaining an opposite
direction. It seems certain that a great number
of failures in the training of the left hand, have
arisen from exacting from it movements super-
imposed upon those of the right hand, and
which are generally contrary to its aptitudes.
It certainly cannot be denied that even identical
movements exacted from the left-hand do produce
satisfactory results in its training, but the true
method is to educate the left hand by " reflection."

From these considerations we evolve the
following rule : Apprenticeship, with the left hand,
to a craft, should be accomplished \by following

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 145

the law of the opposite direction ; that is to say,
that the left hand must not simply copy the
right hand, but that it must execute all the
movements of the right hand, but reversed.
This should be the general rule, in the case of
training to a new trade, as well as in the education
of the left hand for the same craft which was
formerly followed with the right hand.

And in returning to the examples quoted above,
regarding those suffering from aphasia, we say,
that it would benefit them to exercise them
in writing with the left hand " by reflection "
(as well as in drawing " by reflection "), with the
object of developing as promptly as possible, the
centre of writing on the opposite side, and by its
instrumentality acting on the centres of speech
on the right side (motor and sensorial centres).
We will consider one last question. Can the
left hand be trained to any and all handicrafts
without reserve equally well ? The limitations
we are going to make are based upon the results
of our own experiments.

The general results are as follows : — heavy
work with the left hand produces a more considerable
effect on the heart than does the same work when
accomplished with the right hand ; the difference
is about equal to one third (4-87 accelerations
per minute for work by the right hand, and 7-5

K

146 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

accelerations per minute for that by the left).
By working both hands together and thereby
furnishing a double amount of work, the cardiac
acceleration is not the total of that observed
when each hand works separately (4-87 and 7-5
==12-37), but it is less by a quarter (8-97 accelera-
tions). It is, therefore, better for the heart that
the work should be performed by both hands
simultaneously than by each hand separately.
This result pleads strongly for ambidextrous
work, and it shews the harmful effects upon the
heart of heavy work performed by one hand
alone, and that the left.

With regard to the conclusions to be drawn
from these experiments from the standpoint of
the re-education of those crippled in the war,
we would say that the use of the left hand alone
(in the case of the loss of the right arm), cannot
be applied to all industries in view of the harmful
effects of heavy work by the left hand, on the
heart. It is here that a group of our subjects of
experiment, did now shew any difference between
work done by the right, and work done by the
left hand, but since the others shewed an enormous
difference to the disadvantage of the left, the
first group, would, without doubt, have betrayed
a like difference if tested by heavier work ;
and although the experiment was not made,

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 147

it is only reasonable to conclude that this
is so.

It is impossible for us to specify the industries
that are unsuitable for the left arm working
alone, it is for the medical specialists and for the
teachers to decide each case on its merits, and they
should be careful to examine the patient's heart
from the standpoint of disease and of neuroses,
which is the only possible criterion. In certain
cases it would be better to change the patient's
employment than to cause him to do that which
is too exacting for his left hand. On the other
hand, all crafts do not demand a large amount
of expenditure of strength, and may be performed
by the maimed who have only preserved the use
of their left hands.

6. — LEFT-HANDED WRITING BY THE MAIMED.

For the right-handed wounded to learn to write
with their left hand is a problem the importance
of which is notorious at the present time. It
is not only the necessity of giving the left hand
some power of writing adequate to the needs of
current life, a very few attempts would suffice
for that. The question is a more complex one
than that. It is requisite to give to the left hand

148 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

exactly the same efficiency as the right hand
possessed, making it possible for the wounded
man to undertake various employments, especially
that of a teacher, or clerk in an office, obliged to
write with the requisite rapidity in ledgers, etc.
A thorough training is therefore necessary, and
lessons must be given with the co-operation of a
competent teacher and a very practical method
of teaching. By practical method we understand
one that will satisfy the desiderata enumerated,
and which, far from being inspired with theo-
retical questions concerning the reform of hand-
writing, is only bent upon attaining the desired
end, it is, therefore, necessary to teach the left
hand to write exactly in the same way as the
right hand, so that suppleness may be absolutely
assured. Preliminary exercise in " reflected "
writing may, nevertheless, be of undeniable value.
Necessities created by the war, have caused
processes of writing intended for the use of the
left hand, to be evolved. We particularly
recommend the two processes — identical in
their main lines — commended by two professional
men who understand the problem, and who take a
personal interest in it ; both having been deprived
of the use of their right hands, long before the
war began, they have themselves been obliged
to face all the difficulties inherent in the task of

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 149

writing with the left hand in order to prosecute
their callings (of an office clerk in the first case,
a schoolmaster in the second).

According to M. Meurville,1 the failures in the
training are due to defective attitudes : the
copy-book was placed upright, very much to the
left of the body, the arm remaining glued to the
chest, the wrist turned backwards. The writing
was upright, uneven, and produced with difficulty
because of the contraction of the muscles of the
arm, the wrist, and the fingers. The fatigue which
resulted was discouraging. This writer considers
that it is as easy to write with the left hand as
with the right, and therefore, to accomplish
all the clerical work usually performed by the
right hand. The same advice should be given
for writing with the left hand, as for writing
with the right hand, that is, free movement.
Only the position of the copy-book must be quite
different. In order to secure from the left hand
a perfect English hand writing, differing in no
particular from that of the right hand, the
following directions should be followed : —

The copy-book should be placed in front of
the pupil, not quite in the centre of the chest,
slightly to the left, and sloping towards the right.

1 Meurville, How to write with the left hand, Nos. 4, 5, and 6,
1916. Journal des Mutiles.

150 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

The chest should be upright and leant lightly
on the right arm l of which the fore-arm is
resting on the table, the hand resting on the copy-
book. The right side of the body should be
about 5-6 centimetres from the table. The left
side, about 10-12 centimetres off. The left arm
should be separated from the chest by about
20-25 centimetres. The fore-arm should have the
same slant as the copy-book, and the elbow
will act as a pivot which will move towards the
chest, as and when the pupil writes. This
movement will allow of the left hand writing on a
surface of from 6-7 centimetres. The pen chosen
should be fairly soft and should not be held
stiffly.

The most practical and most rapid type of
handwriting is flowing English. A great effort
should be made to form each word without raising
the pen with the hand, — the movement of the
fingers only should come into play in the formation
of the letters, the work of the hand and of the
fore-arm being to move the fingers from one end
to the other, of each line, beginning on the left.
The movement of the wrist will only be needed

1 This statement, of course, applies only in the case of
training persons possessed of both arms to write with the left
hand, as well as with the right. In the case of one-armed
men, the right stump (if any), might be used to steady the
book, if the stump is long enough, or fitted with an artificial
limb.— Ed.

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 151

when the large loops of the capital letters have
to be formed.

To get the slope of English writing, it will be
advisable to exercise the fingers in sloping towards
the right, a movement easily acquired in the
course of a few days. The copy-books or writing
copies in use in schools for right-handed pupils
can be used for left-handed beginners.

With the left hand, one can write an upright
hand equally well. Round-hand and medium
writing (in which the slant is mid- way between
that of English and upright writing), can also be
accomplished.

According to M. Albert Charleux lessons in
writing with the left hand should be taken at very
short intervals. The first attempts are scarcely
ever encouraging and the pupil is doubtful of
success. Another stumbling block to avoid is
that of wishing to get along too quickly.

The first attempts should be made with chalk
upon a blackboard (or on black paper fixed against
a wall). At first, the arm should be held at full
length, then, gradually the drawing should be
reduced until at last, it only needs a movement
of the wrist. These exercises (small drawings
the models of which will be found in the text)
should be executed standing upright, without
stirring the feet, and without bending the body.

152 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

The hand, the arm, and the wrist having thus
obtained a preliminary training, the pupil will
complete his education by applying himself
to the drawing of letters on the blackboard.
The size of the writing should vary from 15 mm.
to 2 centimetres. It is not until after these
stages that writing in a copy-book should begin.

With the right hand, the copy-book is slightly
inclined towards the left ; with the left hand
it should be slightly inclined towards the right.
For either hand the elbow forms a pivot about
which, the fore-arm moves in the same direction
namely from left to right. The left fore-arm,
which is what we are interested in at the present
moment, describes a line which tends towards
the body as it descends towards the right.
The penholder should be lightly held, and it is
necessary to raise the pen as seldom as possible.
The paper will be held steady by means of a
paper-weight. When the maimed are able to
write a flowing hand, they may learn to write
round-hand.

This similarity of the two processes, which in
reality only constitute one, is an argument in their
favour. The only difference is the preliminary
exercises in M. Charleux's method, which, accord-
ing to M. Meurville, are useless. However, this
may be, children who shew a certain difficulty in

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 153

learning to write, get on well when they first
trace words on the blackboard. It may be
rightly said, that the adult pupil is not in exactly
the same position, having already practised
writing with the right hand, and we know that a
training acquired by one psycho-motor centre
transmits itself to the opposite side. The adult
would, therefore, have fewer difficulties to conquer
were it not that with age the manual adapta-
bility diminishes as a rule. We, therefore,
think that preliminary exercises may not be
altogether useless, although not indispensable,
they may help to graduate the difficulties, and
consequently to shorten the period of appren-
ticeship, and to make the steady progress made
by the pupil more evident.

At the moment of going to press with this
book, another study on the art of writing has
appeared, by a M. F. Garcin.1 In order to
acquire the English handwriting and the medium
handwriting, with the left hand, the copy-book
should be placed upright in front of the chest,
so that the travel of the left arm will always be in
prolongation of the line of the slope. In short,
M. Garcin says, when writing with the left hand,
the line of the slope should always be in the

1 F. Garcin, Comment ecrire des deux mains. Paris, Nathan,
35 P.

154 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

direction of the axis of the left arm. As regards
writing with the right hand the line of the slope
should always be perpendicular to the chest.
We must remember that the line of the writing is
the straight horizontal line upon which the writing
is traced, whilst the line of the slope is the
position of the axis of each letter in relation to
the line of writing. The position of the body
always remains the same. The result to be
obtained from the left hand should be exactly
the same as that given by the right hand, but
the two hands act by executing directly opposite
movements.

We will now give an account of the interesting
experiments made by the Polish military doctor,
Adolphi Klesk, who having had to deal with a
number of those injured in the right hand, warmly
advocated left-handed writing. According to
his observations, an adult man learns to write
with his left hand after three or four weeks' training
This study is beneficial for those who have had
arms amputated in the war, for it not only enables
them to write, but it also acts in an encouraging
way on the patient, by giving him a proof, as it
were, that the left hand if properly trained is
capable of learning some kind of craft. It is with
writing then, that a beginning should be made,
for to learn to write with the left hand consti-

POWER AND APTITUDE FOR WORK 155

tutes a powerful pedagogic, medical, and social
asset. To begin with, the left hand has a
tendency to execute " reflected writing," and
it is by an effort of will of about eight day's
duration, that the ordinary handwriting gains
the upper hand. To begin with, too, the left
hand becomes very easily tired. The rhythmic
movements of the fore-arm slipping along the
paper without detaching the edge of the palm of
the hand from the copy-book, are very difficult
to acquire. The author recommends the writing
of letters on a large scale on a blackboard during
the time of training, and, when writing in a
copy-book, the use of soft, glazed paper and soft
pens and pencils.

Encouraged by the results of his experiments,
Dr. Klesk recommends ambidextrous writing
to parents, who should, at an early age, teach
their children to write with either hand, which
amongst other advantages, would result in a
more symmetrical development, and assure the
use of the second hand in the event of an
accident or illness. He especially cites the malady
known as " writer's cramp," which is met more
often amongst office clerks than amongst literary
men, because the former have to preserve the
aesthetic side of handwriting ; this trouble
may become so chronic that the sufferer finds

156 . THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

himself obliged to change his occupation.
These observations of a military doctor are now
of such practical interest that we have thought it
interesting to recount them here, although they
in reality, only confirm the results of our early
experiments.

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 157

IV.

BELGIAN METHODS OF TECHNICAL
EDUCATION.

I. — PROGRESSIVE TECHNICAL EDUCATION
THROUGHOUT BELGIAN SCHOOLS.

The close collaboration of science and industry
will, in the near future be pressing, and numerous
are the tentative experiments already being made,
both in England and in France, with the object
of finding the most adequate solution to the
agonising problem of after-war necessities. In
order to study it properly, it is necessary to
begin at the beginning, at the point where technical
instruction begins ; that is to say, even in the
primary schools, which are supposed to give to
the citizens of the future a general education,
and to follow it up in the secondary schools,
and in the professional, technical, and industrial
colleges.

We will make a tour of this kind, through the
Belgian schools, keeping the communal and
provincial schools principally in view.1

1 J. loteyko, Les Methodes bslges d' education technique.
Revue generate cles Sciences, 30 May, 1917.

158 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

Manual work, from year to year, acquires
increased importance, in the schools of the
town of Brussels.1 " Very soon now," says
A. Nyns, Inspector of Primary Education,
" Manual work will form the basis of all our
teaching, because of its intuitive, concrete,
practical, and experimental character."

Henceforth, the child will learn as much through
the hand and the tool as through the brain and
the book.

The first courses of manual work were opened at
No. 12, Primary School for Boys, at Brussels,
in 1 879.2 The subjects taken were joinery,
wood-turning, modelling, and locksmith's work
The classes were held for from four to five hours
every day, and the pupils were expected to pass
through each workshop. The teaching of
manual work had, at that period, a triple object ;
(i) the manual education of the child ; (2) the
industrial education of the children of the working
classes, to prepare them, in a general way, for
taking up various trades ; (3) to cultivate a
taste for handicrafts by popular classes.

In 1883, M. Sluys, Director of the Brussel's
Manual School for Teachers, and M. Van Kalken,
a professor at that school, undertook a journey

1 A. Nyns, Les travaux manuels a 1'Ecole primaire.
Pamphlet of 24 p., Brussels 1910.

z Needlework in Girls' Schools is of much earlier date.

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 159

to Sweden, in order to study in that country
a really pedagogic organisation of manual training
It was in 1885, that there was opened in Brussels
the first normal course for the instruction of
teachers in woodwork, cardboard work, and
modelling, following the general methods of the
Swedish teacher Otto Salomon. In 1887, when
the first batch of teachers were qualified to teach
the manual work, this branch was entered on the
curriculum of the Normal Schools, and of all the
Schools in the city of Brussels. Manual training,
said the town programme, is looked upon as a
means towards the physical, intellectual and
moral development and perfecting of children.
We cannot aim at the direct teaching of special
trades. What is aimed at is, to develop general
ability, quickness, dexterity of both hands,
prompt and firm movement, a taste for and a
love of work, and to inculcate habits of order and
correctness, to develop the faculties of attention
and perception, to supply a more complete and a
deeper intuition of geometric ideas and forms
of calculation and the metric system, and to make
the pupils more persevering by application
to work, to shew the necessity of producing
nothing but complete and correct work, to
cultivate the sense of beauty through the
harmony of form and colour of the objects made,

160 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

and to inform the pupils with a knowledge of the
technical processes which constitute the founda-
tions of scientific industries.

The methodology of manual work for boys
requires the analysis and understanding of
models and of tools, the demonstration of the pro-
cess of execution, and the construction of model
types. The pupils are gradually exercised in
the handling of tools.

The curriculum for the first standard (children
of from 7-8 years of age) includes : folding,
cutting-out, joining, weaving, and modelling.
The curriculum for the second standard (chil-
dren of from 9-10 years of age) includes : the
art of making cardboard articles, modelling
geometrical solids from plaster casts, common
objects from nature, from memory, and of their
own invention, etc.

The curriculum for the higher standard (chil-
dren of from 11-12 years of age), modelling
and wood-carving. The pupil's work from
models or plans. The models first copied are
horizontal or vertical projections, or sections.
The aesthetic side is most carefully attended to.
The course of wood-carving is given in a workshop.
The programme provides for ten and a half hours
per week, for the six years in a primary school,
one and a half hours for each of the first three

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 161

classes, and two hours for each of the three upper
classes.

Although the teaching of handicrafts in the
primary school is of a purely pedagogic kind,
it is none the less true, that thanks to the training
of the hand, and of the eye, which it involves,
this work develops the qualities of skill, indis-
pensable in the acquisition of a manual trade,
whatever it may be, which must influence the
ultimate special training of the pupils.

We will not here discuss the handicrafts in the
secondary schools. It will suffice to mention
their existence in all these schools and the exis-
tence of several well equipped workshops, bright,
light, and spacious, newly built, near secondary
schools, rejoicing in every modern appliance and
comfort, as, for example, Leon Lepage's secondary
school at Brussels.

The children leave the primary school at 12
or 13 years of age. A few continue their studies
in the secondary schools or in the athenaeums ;
the large majority are the children of the people,
and wish to devote themselves to some handicraft
after leaving the primary school. But they are
still too young to at once enter the training colleges
and also too weak from the physical standpoint.

The Secondary Schools (or Upper Primary
Schools), are intended to give these children a

L

162 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

supplementary general education to enable
them to master such knowledge as may prove
most useful to them in life, whilst waiting until
they are old enough to enter a technical school.
The course of study in the Fourth Standard Schools
lasts two years. The Fourth Primary Standard
education includes three distinct courses,1 (i) the
Fourth Standard for girls ; (2) the Fourth
Standard for boys of professional and commercial
tastes ; (3) the Fourth Standard for boys de-
siring an industrial career. The Fourth Standard
for girls is intended to complete the general
education of the pupils, and to initiate them
in one of the businesses connected with needle-
work. They are, in short, popular small training
schools where the apprenticeship is served amidst
scholarly and moral surroundings. The course
consists of the study of two languages (French
and Flemish), of arithmetic, commerce, natural
sciences, technology, hygiene, social economy,
domestic economy, the history of civilization in
Belgium, commercial geography, music, gymnas-
tics, and swimming.

The Fourth Standard for boys with professional
and commercial leanings, prepares youths for
administrative and commercial occupations ;

1 A. Nj'ns, Les ecoles de 4 degre, pamphlet of 14 p. Brussels
1910.

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 163

those with tastes for handicrafts it trains for
manual work.

We will consider the latter. The children
are not apprenticed to a trade, but are taught the
modus operandi of the various callings. Further-
more, the scientific and theoretical knowledge
imparted to the pupils will be of great service
to them in their manual work. Manual work
can be usefully applied to other branches of the
curriculum such as designing, calculation, geo-
metry, physics, social economy. The pupils do
modelling and cardboard work, they do wood
and iron work. The courses of study have an
essentially practical tendency, and are given with
a view to their application to trade.

The curriculum of the city of Brussels, says,
in substance, that the object of these schools
"is to assist in the formation of a working class
which possesses an intelligent knowledge of the
work it performs, which is master of the machines
it employs, which reads and thinks, and which
is conscious of its own dignity." After this
general and technical preparation, the pupil,
now about 15 years of age, can freely enter any
technical school to serve his apprenticeship to
the calling he has chosen.

Amongst the Fourth Standard schools, that of
Saint-Gilles (Fauburg de Bruxelles), called the

164 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

Morichar School, counts as one of the most
important in the country. Its Head Master,
M. Devogel,1 has won for it a peculiar distinction,
and has made it a model school which has never
yet been surpassed. It will be interesting, we
think, to give a detailed description of this school,
basing our account on official documents, and
on the memory of many personal visits.

The Upper Primary School should not, says
M. Devogel,2 be a duplicate of the Secondary
School. It is absolutely necessary to create an
organization for the working class, whereby
their sons can receive a general education pre-
paring them for all callings, to establish a school
where the children of the people, and of small
employers, who do not wish to adopt adminis-
trative work or become employees or clerks,
can receive clearly specialised manual training,—
to found an institution where, in a word, the son
of the working man, who wishes to remain a
working man, desirous of starting on what we call
a manual career, can, whilst developing himself
as a whole, at the same time prepare himself for
his future social function.

The most useful knowledge to the working man

1 At the present time Director of the Brussels schools.

8 V. Devogel, L'Ecole primaire sup?rieure technique de
Saint-Gilles-les-Byuxelles (called 4th Standard), pamphlet of
104 pp., Brussels, 1911.

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 165

includes Mathematics, the Sciences, Design, and
the Handicrafts. To these must be added the two
national languages (French and Flemish), history,
geography, industrial economy, some knowledge
of accountancy, hygiene and technology. Design
includes industrial design, and ornamental design.
Handicrafts include forestry, agriculture, masonry
and metal work. They are completed by a
course on tools which is the synthesis of the whole.
Technology is completed by numerous visits to
studios, workshops, and factories, paid during
the scholastic year and during the journeys at the
end of the year (five days). Lantern lectures are
used for a great number of the courses ; geography,
technology, etc. The scholastic year winds
up with an exhibition of all the work of all the
pupils. All courses are compulsory.

Let us examine the method adopted in the
teaching at the upper primary school of Saint
Gilles, which prides itself on being only a
primary school. Its special characteristic is
the inter-connection of its different branches,
the constant connection of the different courses,
and the intimate union between the lessons.
Thus, the different branches of mathematics are
constantly intermixed and combined with indus-
trial design, ornamental design is combined with
modelling, with wood-carving, metal work, etc.

166 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

The school has stoutly declined to practise methods
based upon abstractions, holding that that can only
be an end, which is the logical outcome of a whole
series of anterior, concrete, material sensations.
A certain formula has lately, says M. Devogel,
achieved a great success in our country : the
school for life. It is either ingenuous or incomplete.
It says either too little, or says it badly. It is
simply Life in the School that should have been
written, and that is the motto of Saint Gilles.

" A school should reject," the Belgian teacher
goes on to say, " all that is not living, thus con-
forming to the evolution of existence, to the
life of man, to social science, to the science dis-
covered by humanity. Life in the School.
Let us be inspired by that, and let us open wide
the doors and the windows of our classes."

Every branch of instruction is looked at from
this point of view. The elements of design are
found in geometry and in nature ; these two
sources should be explored in succession. Geome-
try leads to the discovery of the meaning of a line.
The line being known, the vegetable or animal
element will be drawn quite naturally. All
designs are based on drawings from nature alone ;
copying is not allowed. Designs have to be made
with the most diverse materials as medium,
the pen, black and coloured crayons, red chalk,

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 167

charcoal, chalk, brush-wash, water-colour, water
colour and gum, oil colour, pastel. Plaster
models have been suppressed, when necessary
a natural model being given to each pupil (plant,
shell, insect). Perspective is taught from the
landscape (the drawing of a door, a wall, the
staircase of a hall, of a country cottage). The
child is allowed to colour his drawing as often as
possible.

The most important branch of the education
given is handicrafts, based upon geometry and
design — both in close relation to them. The
school of Saint Gilles aims at giving the pupil a
manual training as wide as possible. ' Yes,"
M. Devogel says, "let him acquire his manual
humanities." Give to the artisan of the
future the sense of economic life. One might
easily fall into specialisation here ; now, it is
not our object to specialise. Aesthetic develop-
ment should also be striven for. Good taste
is of essential importance to the artisan. To
attain this end, it is indispensable that the child
should be made to work in as many raw materials
as possible and with as many tools as possible.
Consequently, the school was established like a
laboratory for handicrafts.

The school does not wish to act as a substitute
for the workshop, It is here that talent may be

i68 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

awakened. And, M. Devogel adds, when compul-
sory education up to the age of 14 has become
law,1 the Fourth Standard School will become
the natural sequel to the primary school for
the children of the people.

Let us take, as an example, iron work. The
first thing made is a plate, out of sheet-iron for
the handle of a drawer. Each pupil has a model.
This is analysed by the class and the teacher,
as to its nature, its object, its utility, its raw
material, its shape, and its dimensions. The
pupil takes the exact measurements, and makes a
free-hand sketch. They then adjourn to the
workshop. The teacher gives the necessary
technical explanations with regard to the tools,
the work, etc. Each pupil makes the object
according to the pattern. Nothing is more
curious than the lesson of invention. The pupils
are asked how the type of the plate made out of
sheet-iron may be altered eventually. The
pupils try to find out, and give their answers.2
Finally, how is the plate to be ornamented ?
And what shall the ornamentation be ? What
tools shall be used, what machines, what moulding,
what lines ? The pupils then go home and think,
and are thus taught to use their own initiative or

1 Compulsory education in Belgium became law shortly
afterwards.

2 Devogel, loc. cit.

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 169

enterprise, and to exercise their faculty of
invention. They all, always succeed in producing
good results. This lesson, by which the pupils
acquire a method, is adapted to the capacities
of the scholar. He searches, he discovers, he
invents with his own faculties. The pupil's
imagination is kept awake, developed, and
excited. By the end of the year, articles are made
in unison. The whole class then forms only one
workshop and the pupils discuss the outlines of
the project, the details to be made, etc. It is a
true initiation into social life, and the happy
results of this process will accompany the future
workman during the whole of his career.

We can estimate the value of the teaching
at the Fourth Standard School of Saint Gilles,
by glancing at M. Mattot's two manuals, he
being a teacher at the school. The first of these
manuals is devoted to a Course on tools and
handier afts,1 the second,2 to Metal work in the
Student's workshop. In the preface of the first
of these books M. Devogel asks for compulsory
education up to 18 years ; primary, upper
primary, and industrial.

1 A. P. Mattot, Cours d'culils et de metiers manuels. Vol.
328 p. with 354 engravings, 1912 Brussels. Preface by
M. V. Devogel. Leb^gue.

2 The Same : Le travail des Metaux a I' atelier scolaire
Vol. of 214 p. with 128 engravings, 1913 Brussels. Preface
by M. V. Devogel, Lebegue.

170 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

The Industrial School, under the University
of Labour, would comprise the continuation of
primary, and upper primary studies, and the
handling of tools of a mechanical type. Appren-
ticeship, in other words specialisation, would
be served or taught in the workshop, the timber-
yard, the factory. Everywhere, from 6 to 18
years of age, teaching should have general develop-
ment and the awakening of vocational talent,
as its aim ; everywhere the dream would be
to form the man. These will be the " humanities "
for manual or technical craftsmen.

General technology will play a considerable
part in this programme. The workman of the
future will thus be liberally instructed. The
technical education of man will thus be realised.
Through all the stages of education it will stand
side by side, and rank equally with physical,
intellectual, moral and aesthetic education.
It will be studied at the same time as these other
subjects in the primary school. In the upper
primary school, and in the industrial college,
it will be based on a solid foundation of mathe-
matics, natural science, and design. The course
on tools is more than synthetic, it is adopting
M. Paul Hyman's saying the philosophy of
Manual work.

M. Mattot, quoting Franklin, says, " that

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 171

which distinguishes man from the other animals is,
that he manufactures tools." The author gives
very complete lists of tools, he distinguishes 20
classes of them. Each instrument is described,
and a very precise idea is given of it. The book
is illustrated with 350 engravings.

The second book is devoted to metal work.
It is a complete guide to raw materials, to tools,
and the procedure of working in metals, with
suggestions for exercises for the first (13-14 years of
age), and second (14-15 years of age) years' training.

We see that the school of Saint Gilles fully
accepts the pedagogic theory of handicrafts, which
the Americans have formulated in the following
manner.1 " The scientific theory of education
through the handicrafts is definitely established.
All conscious movement has its origin in an
excitation of the motor cells of the brain. Thought
without action, may develop the imagination,
but leaves the will-power uncultivated. Will
can only be developed through action. All
muscular movements react on the brain cells by
sensation, and fix themselves in the centres of
association in the form of perceptions and images.
In order to increase the receptivity of the brain,
a rational education requires that we shall vary

1 0. Buyse, Methodes americaines d 'education gen&ale et
technique, 3rd. ed., 1913, Duriod and Pinat, Pari-j.

THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

the nature of the movements exacted by manual
work, so that all the other groups may be
interested in succession. From these facts it is
evident that, in order to develop the entire motor
region of the brain, full and various exercises
must be multiplied, and directed in such a way
as to sharpen the sensitiveness, to quicken thought,
and to strengthen the will. If the movement
becomes a habit the result of this will also be
that it will be made without reflection and will
cease to develop the motor cells, and, therefore,
cease to have any educational value. It is only
during the first period of excitation, that the
action of manual work is efficacious. Exercises
pushed beyond the educative point, may become
the means of preparing for more advanced work,
of an industrial kind, but they can no longer be
ranked amongst those which contribute to
general development.

" The result of this is, that the educational
action of the various forms of manual work should
be measured by the progression of the mental
reactions which they are capable of provoking.
This is why some teachers cause girls to perform
the same work as boys, in the primary, and even
in the secondary schools."

In a recent article,1 M. R. Astier, a senator

1 R. Astier, Les tvavuux Manuels, Le Journal, 15 May, 191?-

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 173

and president of the Commission on Technical
Education in France, asks why ~the question
concerning the reorganisation of industrial
education in France, officially propounded in
1905, has not yet been answered. One reason
for this regrettable inertia is due to a prejudice,
far too wide-spread in France, which has a tendency
to look down upon manual work as derogatory.
Now, M. Astier affirms that there is no thorough
technical teaching without manual work. That
constitutes its base, its point of departure. Now,
owing to a national fault which has become
more pronounced during the last century, the
Frenchman seems to look upon manual work as
" servile work." He will not see that without
it the most ingenious creations of the mind, the
ideas of a Papin, a Pasteur, of a Berthelot, could
not have been realised. The one ambition of the
middle classes for their sons is that they should
enter either the liberal professions or become
officials.

We believe the danger to be even greater than
M. Astier warns us of, because the working classes
themselves think they are raising themselves a
step in the social scale by pushing their sons into
bureaucratic careers. We have seen what Bel-
gium has done for the workman who wishes to
remain a working man. It seems as though it

174 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

might be possible to efficaciously oppose these
bad tendencies and prejudices by a suitable
education. There are various ways of presenting
work under an agreeable aspect. In the first
place, the feeling of human solidarity makes one
happy and proud to contribute to a common
task, not with the object of enriching the master,
but for the common good of society. Therefore,
all that exalts and ennobles labour should be
made clear. In the second place, there is the
aesthetic side. For this the works of poets,
sculptors, and painters who have made the
apotheosis of labour should be popularized.
Force, courage, perseverance, all have beauty.
And .the clank of metals, the heat of factories,
the flames of the furnace, coal mining, all speak
an appealing language, more proud and attractive
than that of the peaceful occupations of a bureau-
crat.

Now let us pass on to technical education pro-
perly so-called (V2,3).

Councils for the improvement of technical
teaching have been formed in Hainaut, in Brabant,

1 j. lotcyko. I'Univcrsite du travail de C/uirlerci ei Ic pro-
bleme de I'apprentisage (Revue generate cies sciences, 15 fevrier,
1917.

3 Charles Gheude, V Enseignement technique dans le Brabant.
Publication clc la Ligne de 1'Enseignement, 21 p. Brussels, 1912.

3 J. H. de Wemel, Enseignement technique pour jeunes
gens et adaidts. Enseig. de la ville de Bruxelles. Broch.
de 45 p., 1910 Brussels.

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 175

and in Brussels. The technical training of the
workman has been placed in the first rank of the
social problems of the day. The numerous
technical schools founded by the city of Brussels
have many aims, they are principally : to
improve the craft, so as to train picked workmen
(school of jewellery, of typography, book-binding,
gilding, lead work, plumbing, mechanics, etc.) ;
to put the young men of the country in a position
to carry on, in their entirety, trades to a great
extent monopolised by foreigners (school of
hairdressing) ; to remedy the inadequate pre-
paration in languages, and accountancy ; to
fight against " machine-ism ; " to give birth to a
taste for the beautiful and good ; to enable
national industries to successfully sustain the
struggle against foreign competition (school of
lithography) ; to keep in touch with progress ;
to improve public taste by improving the artisans ;
to democratize teaching by making it accessible
to all ; to create a remunerative trade ; to
revive a trade, fallen into decay by reason of a
difficult apprenticeship and rudimentary organisa-
tion ; to fight against an immoderate infatuation
for office careers ; to prevent the artisan from
becoming reduced to the role of a mere machine
without any ideals ; to take physical and in-
tellectual aptitudes into account ; to avoid the

176 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

creation of inefficient artisans who would encumber
the trade ; and to establish a connection between
the various trades that have points of contact.
The complementary teaching of ideas in which
young people might be lacking, the study of all
papers of technical interest, the forming of special
libraries, holding lantern lectures, visits to museums,
monuments, factories, excursions, the exhibi-
tion of works of past scholars, all combine in
making up an exhaustive curriculum.

It is impossible to speak of each school separ-
ately. We must be content to indicate the
methods of teaching adopted in some of them.

The characteristic of the teaching in the School
of design, modelling and wood-carving, consists in
(contrary to the special academies of design and
modelling, which generally only teach from
the classics) teaching the pupil how he should
understand his work, the object of which is its
application to the building and furniture-making
industries. The subject given is first of all
sketched, then modelled according to the sketch,
and is finally executed in wood. The pupil
is at the same time initiated in a knowledge of the
different styles employed in decorative art and
furnishing. At the technical school of mechanics
the professors avoid empirical work and give the
most rational scientific basis for the manufacture

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 177

of the object to be produced. The construction
of an apparatus is made in accordance with a
plan sketched by the pupil, and afterwards
verified by the master.

The teaching in the training school for plumbing
aims at the training of certified sanitary plumbers,
such as have been asked for by the various
International Congresses of Hygiene. They
furthermore endeavour to resuscitate the industry
in ornamental lead- work. Sanitary technology
is taught in two, three, or four years of study.

The pupil who leaves at the end of three years
should be competent to, himself, elaborate a
complete system of sanitary drainage and to
carry it through in all its details. Drawing,
physics, and chemistry are the subjects of serious
study.

The industrial school of ornamental tapestry
trains its pupils in the problems of aesthetics and
art. An art decorator cannot ignore the dis-
tinctive characteristics of the different styles of
house furniture, and inside decoration. A course
on the history of art, answers this purpose the best.

The course for typography has for its object the
training of picked workman in order that Belgian
printing shall not only be able to compete satis-
factorily with foreign productions, but also to
recapture the prosperity and renown which she

M

178 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

enjoyed in Plantin's days. The creation of a
style, of a national method, that will allow of the
recognition of books printed in Belgium, just as
this is the case with some that are printed in
Germany, France, England, etc., each of these
countries possessing a style of its own, is another
object. The motto taken " raise the level of the
typographic art," indicates a clearly artistic
programme, which has a still higher aim, — to
make creative craftsmen, without, however, neglect-
ing the mechanical side, which becomes, more
and more important every day. The courses
in design develop good taste, the sense of observa-
tion, and the analysis of complicated subjects,
and permit of the production of the complete work.
The course on colouring has three principal
objects : (i) To enable the workman to produce
all the shades of colour with a sure hand, by a
study of colour and material ; (2) To make of
the typographist the direct collaborator of the
artist by enabling him to acquire ideas on art,
sufficient for this purpose ; (3) To enable the
workman to use coloured inks. These three
points are developed in thirty lessons in the
theoretical course. The practical course consists
of sixty lessons.

As far as the book industry is concerned, the
city of Brussels possesses a Technical school of

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 179

Art-binding and gilding, where, side by side with
subjects of a technical nature a course is given
on the history of the book and of book-binding.

The Commercial School is a school for the
training of clerks.

The city of Brussels has declared its determina-
tion to see the founding of Normal Technical
Schools, and Industrial Universities, which shall
constitute a Federation of the Industrial Schools
of the Kingdom. A second resolve is to institute
a propaganda in favour of compulsory industrial
training as a consequence of compulsory primary
education.

2. — THE CHARLEROI UNIVERSITY OF LABOUR.

The problem of Technical Education and
training, ranks amongst the most important of
our century wherein industrialisation is pushed
to an extreme, and the problem has become
exaggerated since events have rendered workmen
scarce, even though, after war conditions should be
marked by a renewed need, and an accelerated
productivity. All eyes are turned, so to speak,
towards that side of life, towards the best methods
of organising it and fostering an increase of
productivity.

180 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

We think that an enquiry concerning the
Belgian technical institutions will furnish a really
interesting study of activity, Belgium being the
country where industrial production has attained
to a rate unknown elsewhere in Europe at present,
in proportion to the number of its inhabitants.
The Charleroi University of Labour, which is well-
known to the writer personally, thanks to visits
and studies made upon the spot, has happily
escaped the bombardment, from the effects of
which the town itself has suffered terribly. For
a description of it we will borrow the following
passage from M. Omer Buyse, former director
of the institution1 " From the Mound of Waterloo
which dominates the agglomeration of boroughs,
of which Charleroi is the centre, the view stretches
over a region which has not its equal in the
world, from the standpoint of the concentration
of industry and the density of the working-class
population. In the foreground, the city which
has not yet reached its full extent, and its suburbs,
descends to the banks of the Sambre ; the
industrial landscape stretches out beyond ; the
framework of the winding gear of the coalmines
is visible all over the place, and the landscape
is punctuated with the rounded hillocks at the

1 Omer Buyse, Methodes americaines d' Education generate
et technique, 3rd. ed., 1913. Paris 847 p. and 398 ills. The
last chapter is devoted to the University of Labour.

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 181

pit-heads ; by the great bays of the glass works,
the balls of cherry-coloured glass attached to the
retorts of the blowers may be seen balancing
themselves with a majestic rhythm. A multitude
of chimneys belch out their black smoke ; the
heavy outlines of the tall furnaces stand out
against the foundries, forges, rolling-mills, work-
shops for the manufacture of metal work, mechani-
cal, and electrical, chemical factories, and those
for refractory products. Of an evening above the
steel- works jets of shimmering light rise up,
which illuminate the foggy sky like a gigantic
blaze of fireworks. Puffs of white vapour,
escaping from the engines are the outward signs
of the intense labour which the working popula-
tion performs for its daily bread, at the price
of effort and of danger, a thousand yards
under-ground, and within the shade of the
factories. The sight gives an impression of
grandeur.

" The province of Hainaut could not have chosen
a more appropriate site for the first University
of Labour which it founded in accordance with
the grand conception of M. Paul Pastur, its
permanent deputy, and M. Alfred Langlois,
at that time Inspector of Technical Education
in Hainaut. That institution combines with the
activities of that laborious region to dominate

182 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

the country like an ideal for the technical and
moral raising of the working class.

" The title, ' University of Labour,' which
covers the whole of the technical educational
system for Hainaut concentrated at Charleroi,
is very arresting to those interested in industrial
progress and the education of the working man.
A title of nobility, a tardy homage paid to
manual labour on which compliments and
favours are too rarely showered, because it is
performed by those whose education and training
has always been neglected ! "

The two buildings occupied by the University
of Labour cover a surface of three and three-
quarter acres ; the style of architecture is sober and
severe ; in the large hall stands the statue of
the Hammerer ' by Constantin Meunier. The
Institution was founded by the province of
Hainaut ; the Belgian traditions of decentralisa-
tion, and communal and provincial autonomy,
give to communal and provincial administrations
the right of initiative This plan of action
permits of the existence of an organisation de-
voted to the local needs of the population. The
University of Labour has come into being in the
most industrial province in the country. Its
management was undertaken by M. Omer Buyse,
who had for a long time studied the conditions

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 183

of technical education in the United States of
America. M. Omer Buyse resigned his post
in 1914, only a few months before the outbreak
of war, and the invasion of Belgium, for the
benefit of the second University of Labour, which
was to be founded in Brussels. The capital of
Belgium did not wish to loiter behind on the
road to industrial and technical progress, and it
commissioned Mr. Buyse to organise a similar
institution (which was also to include a section
reserved for women), intended to act as a centre
for the whole of the technical and industrial
schools of the province of Brabant. What fate
is in store for this new foundation ? We trust
it awaits its realization in a not far distant future.

We will return briefly to the arrangement
and the character of the various uses of the
University of Labour at Charleroi, taking
official documents as our guides.

The district of Charleroi includes six industrial
communal schools, which have six thousand
working children as scholars. In conjunction
with these schools, the University of Labour has
instituted a system of technical education,
which comprises the Industrial Day Schools and
Industrial Evening and Sunday courses, the
middle stage being the Upper Industrial School,
and the highest the Upper Finishing Course.

184 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

Thus, to every young man of intelligence and
perseverance, this institution offers graduated
series of courses that he may pass through (without
being called upon to make any pecuniary sacrifices)
and raise himself from the most modest social
level to the highest point of technical knowledge.
One noteworthy characteristic of the method
of teaching introduced in the University of Labour
is the amount of experimental work done ; side
by side with the theoretical course, a number of
technical manipulations and experiments are
made ; by this means a large amount of material
is dealt with. It is thus that the physical and
mechanical phenomena which form the base of
almost all constructive industries are taught,
in an experimental and quantitative form analo-
gous to the conditions of the industry itself.
For example, all the phenomena and the laws
which refer to the flowing of fluids, are demon-
strated by means of elaborate apparatus, such as
a branch canal from the town water works, of
which the pressure and supply are regulated
by taps and measured by metres, and manometers.
Ideas as to the mechanical properties of materials
are verified on apparatus for testing by bending
tension, compression, torsion and shock, identical
to those actually employed in the industries
themselves. The courses on machine tools for

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 185

joiners and modellers are supported by experi-
ments on industrial machines ; ideas on boilers,
steam kettles, etc., are taught by practical manipu-
lations ; the course on electricity is experimental,
as is also that on thermodynamics.

The Eleven Industrial Evening and Sunday
Schools are intended for the training : (i) of
printers and typographers ; (2) of plumbers
and glaziers ; (3) zinc-workers ; (4) bakers ;
(5) pastry-cooks ; (6) market-gardeners ; (7)
locksmiths ; (8) tailors ; (9) industrial model-
lers ; (10) moulders and founders ; (n) elec-
trical fitters. These schools only take young
men who are really employed in the trade ; they
are attended by 500 apprentices and workmen.

The bakery school of the University of Labour
was the first to be established in France and in
Belgium, and its establishment awakened keen
curiosity in the bakers' union, the trade having
been, in the highest degree, traditional. Amongst
scientific trades, that which is taught in the
plumbing school is of great interest ; it has
preserved its manual character. As regards the
school of electricity, the basis of the study, as here
taught, is technical electricity which permits of
experimental study in the electrical laboratory
and in the generation of continuous and alterna-
ting currents, of the phenomena and laws of

186 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

electricity, and of its application to lighting,
its motor power and other transformations
of electrical energy. The technological courses
on electrical industries are nothing but one
long succession of manipulations which are
performed by the pupils themselves on some
material connected with the industry, under the
guidance of the teachers ; the theory of the
operations is taught by a course of lectures
delivered in the auditorium of the laboratory
itself. Technical drawing plays one of the most
important parts in this teaching. The evening
schools have the effect of extending the scientific
and trade knowledge of the workmen, and of
widening their productive powers.

The Industrial Day Schools, are four in number,
and have four school years : The School of
Mechanics, the School of Electricity, the School
of Joinery, and the Modelling School. They are
attended by 700 apprentices, free of charge.
The branches of trade taught here give the
apprentices a preparatory training for every
trade. In the first year's course, the beginners
execute a graduated series of subjects in wood
and in iron ; their aptitudes are indicated and
their tastes are developed. At the end of the year
they take up one technical speciality, which they
choose under the advice of their teachers and

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 187

parents. All the pupils do the work themselves,
keep their own tools in order, and draw their own
plans. The course on the technology of con-
struction, combined with the mechanics and the
strength of materials, completes the technical
training of builders, etc. An experimental
course on heat and steam engines completes the
industrial training of mechanical engineers (auto-
mobile engineers, etc.). A wage of from 5-20
centimes per hour is paid to the pupils during
their apprenticeship.

The Upper Industrial School is of a superior
order. Those employers and workmen who
have, thanks to their taste and skill, been able to
leave elementary industrial schools and trade
schools, have the means of perfecting themselves
in the evening and Sunday courses of the Upper
Industrial School, which are spread over three
years because of there being only nine hour's
attendance per week. In order to be admitted to the
Upper Industrial School, the pupil must be 18
years of age, which assumes that apprenticeship
must have been served, and the knowledge of a
trade acquired. Six hundred pupils attended these
courses in 1912-3 ; they were distributed among
nine sections, which represented the large indus-
tries of the district, that is to say : (a) Mechanical
Engineers and Draughtsmen ; (b) Electricians ;

i88 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

(c) Civil Engineers ; (d) Mining ; (e) Chemical
Industries ; (/) Metallurgical Industries ; (g) In-
dustrial Arts ; (h) Science of Accountancy ; (i) Cor-
respondents. And it is a most interesting sight
to see the auditoriums and the laboratories
crowded with men of from 18-20, sometimes
30 years of age, who, after the tiring occupations
of the day, come there to attend courses for an
additional three years. This effort is chiefly
necessitated by the rapid changes in the processes
of working. The Upper Industrial School
takes an active part in the progress of this depart-
ment of industry, by providing those workmen
already trained with the foundations of a perfect
scientific and technical education. The scientific
character of the courses given here is clearly
acknowledged. Besides, it is experience which
is its essential foundation ; from the standpoint
of experimental methods, the school possesses
a wealth of appliances. In certain sections it
is quite complete (the electrical for example).
The metallurgical and chemical laboratories,
with their spacious halls, are provided with
tables to work at, with ovens and with all the
apparatus necessary for the study of electro-
chemistry.

The finishing courses in technology are intended
for all the young men of the wealthy classes

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 189

destined to form a staff of specialists for the great
national industries of the country. This course
entails at least two hundred hours of instruction,
and manipulation, and entitles the students
to a Technician's Diploma. It now remains for
us to speak of the Technological Museum. The
first purpose of this Museum is to contribute to
the improvement of the methods of technical
teaching ; this purpose is attained by exhibiting
the works of industrial schools, by normal courses,
and by the central laboratory of the schools.

The normal courses for the Professors at the
commercial and industrial schools, which have
been given since 1905, are an indispensable
complement to technical teaching. These courses
are intended to attract those workmen and em-
ployees who have been selected by their Upper
Industrial School for a professorial career ; these
courses last for two years and are attended
by 80 students.

The Museum sends, free of cost, to those
schools which ask for them, its technological
collections and its apparatus, to enable them
to extend the field of their demonstrations,
which are generally circumscribed ; these col-
lections are also accessible to parties of scholars
from other schools, when conducted by their
professors ; industrial experiments and experi-

THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

mental meetings are arranged for them in their
own laboratories, thus bringing those industrial
schools which are too isolated, into touch with
current ideas. Seventeen trade asssociations, of
which thirteen are under patronage, and four
artisan, aid its efforts to attract the industrial
classes towards a regeneration of labour.

The Museum possesses some superb collections,
such as apparatus illustrative of the types of
mechanism invented from the time of the invention
of the steam engine down to the present day,
collections connected with metallurgical indus-
tries, chemistry, ceramics, brewing, distilling,
and soap making, and which demonstrate synop-
tically the processes through which the raw
materials pass in these trades. The collections
in all their variety, serve to illustrate labour.
In the lecture hall of the library, visitors are
permitted to consult the books and to make
notes and plans.

A staff for commercial consultations exists
and gives most useful aid. We may also mention
intermittent courses for trained masters and men,
courses which make demonstrations and which
offer valuable help to those who think themselves
too old to attend the regular courses of a school
(they are attended by many thousands of
auditors), and systematically organised trade

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 191

competitions having for their object the stimula-
tion of the workman in his endeavours to attain
self-improvement. In this manner in the course
of a year, the University of Labour has organised
competitions between typographers, tailors, plum-
bers, masons, plasterers, and bakers.

To sum up the University of Labour, based
upon the principles of American methods of
technical education, brought over from the
United States by Omer Buyse, renders the greatest
service to the industrial province of Hainaut.
Opened in 1903 with 152 pupils it has collected
together a permanent population of nearly 2,000
scholars. The pupils trained in these schools
have materially contributed to the improvement
of the technical methods of factories and workshops.

3. — BELGIAN INITIATIVE IN THE INDUSTRIAL
RE-EDUCATION OF THOSE MAIMED IN THE WAR,
IN FRANCE.

In this triumph of applied science, the Province
of Hainaut has not forgotten the unfortunate
victims of accidents incurred in the prosecution
of their work ; it has dreamed of re-constructing

THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

a new life for them, also based upon productive
labour.

The School for those crippled and broken by toil,
established by the Province at Charleroi, could
certainly never have anticipated such a glorious
destiny as was reserved for it only a few years
after its foundation. M. Herriot, Mayor of Lyons
and Senator for the Rhone, has not hesitated to
declare that " all the schools for the re-education
of those wounded in the war must be regarded
as branches of the School for Cripples at
Charleroi."

Before recording the part played by Belgium,
and particularly by the Province of Hainaut,
in the work of the re-education of those wounded
in France, let us devote a few words to the
School at Charleroi.

Its inspirer was M. Pastur, permanent deputy
for Hainant. In the course of a minute enquiry
he learnt that most of those maimed in the
industries were condemned to idleness. In
collaboration with M. Caty, he, in 1907, laid
before the provincial Council of Hainaut a paper
entitled : L' Assistance aux Estropies par la
creation d'ecoles d' apprentissage et d' ateliers.
(Assistance for the injured, by the establishment
of schools of apprenticeship, and workshops).
The authors asked that such a school should be

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 193

founded for the Province of Hainaut, at
Charleroi. The proposal was accepted, and that
same year, a commission composed of MM.
Pastur, Caty, Balthazar, and Dourlet, was sent
on a mission to Sweden, Norway, Germany,
and France, there to study industries for the
maimed.

In 1908, the school for cripples was founded at
Charleroi, the only one actually existing in
Belgium itself,1 and the first in Western Europe.
The school was placed under the management
of Dr. Dourlet.2 The aim of the school is to
place those injured in their work in a position
to derive what benefit they can from whatever
capacity for work there may be left to them ;
for this a special training is required, based upon
the nature of the physical handicap from which
they are suffering, and upon an industry appro-
priate to their remaining powers. The School
for Cripples is connected with the technical
institutions founded by the Province of Hainaut,
and to the Charleroi University of Labour in
particular. Each apprentice, after the first
month, receives wages, and meals in the canteen

1 Several months before the war, the Province of Brabant
took a similar step.

2 Dourlet. L'Ecole provinciate d'Apprentissage ct Us
Atelier pour Estropies de Charleroi. Revue Psychologique,
Vol. I 1908, pp. 280-287.

N

194 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

are free. The chief workshops are those for
carpet - weaving, basket - making, brush - making,
saddlery, harness-making, and orthopaedics, and
al^o schools for tailors, book-binding, and
cardboard work, shoemaking and accountancy.
The School for Cripples at Charleroi supplies a
want ; the number of its pupils, from its first
beginning, is the best proof of this. Its activities
have rendered great services, by giving to the
crippled, heretofore generally doomed to beggary
and a life of privation, a craft which allows of
their living honourably by their work. According
to reports which we have received, the School
at Charleroi has already begun to train some of
those maimed in the war.

Several months before, the war broke out,
M. Herriot, the Mayor of Lyons, visited the
School for Cripples at Charleroi. He was struck
by its practical utility and its humane work.
One saw, for example, a man who had had both
fore-arms amputated, occupied, thanks to special
apparatus, in nailing brushes ; one of the stumps
bore a block of steel which served as a hammer,
the other a leathern prosthesis furnished with a
loadstone with which to place the nails. The
school has its shop of prosthetic appliances where
the ingenuity of the doctor seeks a solution to
the most varied problems. As much care is

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 195

bestowed upon the intellectual development
of the pupils as upon their physical re-
education.1

The Mayor of Lyons had determined on
founding a similar school in his own town,
when the world-war broke out, and turned his
thoughts into other channels. It was then
that he adapted the Charleroi methods to
the re-education of the victims of the war,
and he opened the first School for the Wounded
at Lyons on 16 December, 1914. He entrusted
its organisation and management to M. Baseque,
the secretary of the Charleroi University of Labour.
The collaboration of the Charleroi University
is thus clearly shewn, and when M. Poincare
went over the Institution at Lyons, he was
able to appreciate the first fruits of the fine
co-operation between France and Belgium :
some hundreds of those wounded in the war,
those who have had an upper or a lower limb
amputated, and those suffering from ankylosis,
become gradually able to take up work again,
thanks to the ingenious apparatus and systems
for re-education, thought out by the technical
staff of the institution.

The second Industrial School for the wounded

1 Ed. Herriot, L' Ecolc des blesses. Le Journal, Paris
23 Nov., 1914.

196 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

to be opened was that of Saint Maurice,
Paris.

It was again for Belgian collaboration that the
French applied when founding the third Industrial
School for the Wounded, which is that at Mont-
pellier. Its technical manager is M. Drousart,
General Secretary of the provincial schools for
technical instruction, in the town of Tournay.
Its Medical Director is Dr. Jeanbrau, Professor
of Medicine at Montpellier. The institution is
modelled upon that at Charleroi and amongst
its teachers is M. Tamenne of Charleroi, whose
right arm has been amputated, and who gives his
writing and educational courses with his left
hand Specialists teach joinery, cabinet-making,
varnishing, wood - turning, plan - drawing, ac-
countancy, short-hand, etc.

The schools at Lyons and Montpellier, organised
and directed by two Belgians, are institutions
which depend entirely upon the French Govern-
ment, and are not supposed to admit any but French
pupils. Nevertheless, the Montpellier School
has a large contingent of Russian wounded,
and will shortly be admitting some Serbians
As to the Belgian wounded, they receive their
re-education at the Belgian School at Post-Villez
(Eure), which was opened in October, 1915.
This school, as well as the Belgian Depot for

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 197

Invalids of the War at Saint Adresse, have
been established by the Belgian Ministry of
War, without the help of the technical educa-
tion staff of Hainaut. The Charleroi school
has, in each case, indirectly served as a
model for all the schools for the wounded
that have been founded in France since the war.

There is room to mention here the part taken
by the Belgians in the invention of new prosthetic
apparatus. These may be divided into two
large groups : (i) Prosthetic Apparatus, for the
lower limbs (peg-legs and artificial legs) ; (2) Pre-
hensile apparatus (upper limbs).

Most interesting instruments have been inven-
ted by the Belgians for the lower limbs. Dr.
Hendrickx, of the Rouen Hospital, and Dr.
Martin, from the Depage Hospital at La Panne,
have invented a wooden leg (on the Ameri-
can system), that is quite remarkable. We
had the opportunity of seeing an exhibition of
certain models at the Congress of the Allies for
the study of industrial re-education, which was
held in Paris at the Grand Palais, in May, 1917.
The French Government was keenly interested
in these appliances and approved the principle
on which they were made. The Belgian army
was the first to adopt the system of American
artificial legs.

ig8 THE SCIENCE OF LABOUR

M. Drousart l had some prehensile appliances,
which have given entire satisfaction, made at
the Montpellier school, and these have been
adopted by the Department of Public Health.
They are issued to all those who have suffered
amputation in the XVI district. One innova-
tion is of great interest. The school has
succeeded in teaching the wounded how to make
these prosthetic appliances. This presents two
undeniable advantages, (i) The number of
specialists in this art had become quite insufficient
since the necessities of the war had led to the
invention of new orthopaedic appliances ; it is,
therefore, to a certain extent, a new craft that
has arisen, and it was right that the victims
of the war should, themselves, be the first to
profit by it ; (2) The wounded soldiers, having
themselves become the makers of the instruments,
are most valuable advisers to those who invent
the instruments that are to replace the missing
or paralyzed limb.

We have thought it would be of interest to
add this short notice of the working of the

1 Ed. Drousart, La re education des imitiles de la guerre.
La Revue meridianate des Idees, Novembrc, 1916, Mont-
pellier ; La perfect ionnement des appareils orthopedlques pour
re-education profcssionnelie. Bulletin de I'ceuvre des Mutiles
de la guerre de la XVI region, ist, Octobre, 1916, Mont-
pellier. See also Dr. Jeanbrazz, L'Ecole professionnclle
des blesses de la XVI region a Montpellier. Pamphlet
96 p., 1916. Montpellier.

BELGIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION 199

Belgian methods of technical education ; at
the very time when Charleroi was being bombarded
by the enemy, its influence was shining across
the world, its initiative was being associated with
France in the great work of rescuing the men
who had returned from the war ' incomplete/
and restoring them to work and to society.

THE END.

CLIFTON I

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